Sense (sĕns), n. [L.
sensus, from sentire, sensum, to perceive, to
feel, from the same root as E. send; cf. OHG. sin sense,
mind, sinnan to go, to journey, G. sinnen to meditate,
to think: cf. F. sens. For the change of meaning cf.
See, v. t. See Send, and cf.
Assent, Consent, Scent, v. t.,
Sentence, Sentient.] 1.
(Physiol.) A faculty, possessed by animals, of perceiving
external objects by means of impressions made upon certain organs
(sensory or sense organs) of the body, or of perceiving changes in the
condition of the body; as, the senses of sight, smell, hearing,
taste, and touch. See Muscular sense, under Muscular,
and Temperature sense, under Temperature.
Let fancy still my sense in Lethe
steep.
Shak.
What surmounts the reach
Of human sense I shall delineate.
Milton.
The traitor Sense recalls
The soaring soul from rest.
Keble.
2. Perception by the sensory organs of the
body; sensation; sensibility; feeling.
In a living creature, though never so great, the
sense and the affects of any one part of the body instantly
make a transcursion through the whole.
Bacon.
3. Perception through the intellect;
apprehension; recognition; understanding; discernment;
appreciation.
This Basilius, having the quick sense of a
lover.
Sir P. Sidney.
High disdain from sense of injured
merit.
Milton.
4. Sound perception and reasoning; correct
judgment; good mental capacity; understanding; also, that which is
sound, true, or reasonable; rational meaning. "He speaks
sense." Shak.
He raves; his words are loose
As heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense.
Dryden.
5. That which is felt or is held as a
sentiment, view, or opinion; judgment; notion; opinion.
I speak my private but impartial sense
With freedom.
Roscommon.
The municipal council of the city had ceased to speak
the sense of the citizens.
Macaulay.
6. Meaning; import; signification; as, the
true sense of words or phrases; the sense of a
remark.
So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly,
and gave the sense.
Neh. viii. 8.
I think 't was in another sense.
Shak.
7. Moral perception or appreciation.
Some are so hardened in wickedness as to have no
sense of the most friendly offices.
L'
Estrange.
8. (Geom.) One of two opposite
directions in which a line, surface, or volume, may be supposed to be
described by the motion of a point, line, or surface.
Common sense, according to Sir W. Hamilton:
(a) "The complement of those cognitions or
convictions which we receive from nature, which all men possess in
common, and by which they test the truth of knowledge and the morality
of actions." (b) "The faculty of first
principles." These two are the philosophical significations.
(c) "Such ordinary complement of intelligence,
that,if a person be deficient therein, he is accounted mad or
foolish." (d) When the substantive is
emphasized: "Native practical intelligence, natural prudence, mother
wit, tact in behavior, acuteness in the observation of character, in
contrast to habits of acquired learning or of speculation." --
Moral sense. See under Moral,
(a). -- The inner, or
internal, sense, capacity of
the mind to be aware of its own states; consciousness;
reflection. "This source of ideas every man has wholly in
himself, and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with
external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be
called internal sense." Locke. -- Sense
capsule (Anat.), one of the cartilaginous or bony
cavities which inclose, more or less completely, the organs of smell,
sight, and hearing. -- Sense organ
(Physiol.), a specially irritable mechanism by which some
one natural force or form of energy is enabled to excite sensory
nerves; as the eye, ear, an end bulb or tactile corpuscle, etc. -
- Sense organule (Anat.), one of the
modified epithelial cells in or near which the fibers of the sensory
nerves terminate.
Syn. -- Understanding; reason. -- Sense,
Understanding, Reason. Some philosophers have given a
technical signification to these terms, which may here be stated.
Sense is the mind's acting in the direct cognition either of
material objects or of its own mental states. In the first case it is
called the outer, in the second the inner, sense.
Understanding is the logical faculty, i. e., the power
of apprehending under general conceptions, or the power of
classifying, arranging, and making deductions. Reason is the
power of apprehending those first or fundamental truths or principles
which are the conditions of all real and scientific knowledge, and
which control the mind in all its processes of investigation and
deduction. These distinctions are given, not as established, but
simply because they often occur in writers of the present day.