SENSIBILITY.
Synonyms:
| feeling, | impressibility, | sensitiveness, | susceptibility. |
Sensibility in the philosophical sense, denotes the capacity of emotion or feeling, as distinguished from the intellect and the will. (Compare synonyms for [SENSATION].) In popular use sensibility denotes sometimes capacity of feeling of any kind; as, sensibility to heat or cold; sometimes, a peculiar readiness to be the subject of feeling, especially of the higher feelings; as, the sensibility of the artist or the poet; a person of great or fine sensibility. Sensitiveness denotes an especial delicacy of sensibility, ready to be excited by the slightest cause, as displayed, for instance, in the "sensitive-plant." Susceptibility is rather a capacity to take up, receive, and, as it were, to contain feeling, so that a person of great susceptibility is capable of being not only readily but deeply moved; sensitiveness is more superficial, susceptibility more pervading. Thus, in physics, the sensitiveness of a magnetic needle is the ease with which it may be deflected, as by another magnet; its susceptibility is the degree to which it can be magnetized by a[329] given magnetic force or the amount of magnetism it will hold. So a person of great sensitiveness is quickly and keenly affected by any external influence, as by music, pathos, or ridicule, while a person of great susceptibility is not only touched, but moved to his inmost soul.
Antonyms:
| coldness, | deadness, | hardness, | insensibility, | numbness, | unconsciousness. |
Prepositions:
The sensibility of the organism to atmospheric changes.