Sensible and sensibles

Use in the book

Being sensible of wants and gifts means feeling their reality and value, not merely holding an abstract proposition about them. Such awareness makes enjoyment possible. The adjective takes the other direction when sensible and visible things are contrasted with the invisible soul: there it describes objects available to sensation. The noun sensibles returns to the sensing subject when Love is called most quick and tender among them. Distinguishing perceiver from perceived prevents these nearby uses from becoming a single confused doctrine of sensation.

Places to read

1. I.45Awareness of wants makes awareness of treasures possible.
2. IV.80Sensibles are feeling beings, with Love pre-eminent in responsiveness.
3. IV.81Sensible things are perceptible objects to which people confine attention.

In this edition

The 2026 note to IV.80 supplies the unusual plural’s sense. Its gloss cannot be transferred unchanged to “sensible and visible things” in the next meditation.

Use in the book

Creatures that perceive and things perceived

In the preface, “vegetals and sensibles” extends melancholy from humans to plants and animals. Burton distinguishes natural Saturnine correspondences from a melancholy produced by circumstances, illustrated by transplanted plants, caged birds and animals deprived of companions. Sensibles here means creatures with senses, not creatures whose conduct is reasonable. Political bodies are then called sensible by analogy: kingdoms and provinces can suffer disorders as human bodies do. The ensuing description of a healthy commonwealth develops the organic comparison.

The anatomical hierarchy gives the usual three faculties as vegetative, sensitive and rational. The sensitive includes vegetative life; the rational includes both lower levels. The earlier alternative report about reason in beasts is retained beside that common division, together with Burton’s admission that the faculties’ precise distinction and connection seem beyond human capacity. “Sensible Soul” is the heading for the faculty that lives, senses, desires, judges, breathes and moves. It divides into apprehension and movement, and the brain is given as its general organ. Here sensible and sensitive concern the capacity for sensation, not susceptibility to hurt feelings.

The same paragraph calls that faculty’s object a “sensible or passible quality.” Sensible now describes what affects a sense: a perceptible quality rather than the power perceiving it. “Species of sensible things” are representations of perceptible objects; internal senses retain and work with forms previously received through sense, including representations of absent or past things. The account does not say that an absent object is directly sensed from afar.

The later distinction between natural, sensible and rational love uses the same levels. Sensible love is animal love, assigned five causes: pleasure in mating; preservation of the species and desire for offspring; affinity with one’s own kind; habit and familiarity; and nurturing. The fourth allows animals raised together to love across species; the fifth distinguishes the creature that raises another’s young, as a hen raises ducklings. Natural love had included the tendencies of lifeless things and plants. Calling this love sensible therefore marks sentient life, not prudence or moral approval.

The noun beside the adjective does not by itself settle the sense. The synopsis lists “sensible objects” such as hawks, hounds and horses between lifeless objects and people. Its living/lifeless contrast supports reading these as sentient animals considered as objects of affection, although the modern column calls them “objects of the senses.” The fuller discussion confirms that pleasant objects include both living and lifeless things and locates the danger in loving them excessively. Elsewhere “sensible creatures” supports different arguments: animals stand above plants in Burton’s defence of divinely appointed social ranks, and are said to show love’s frenzy more violently than plants. An English margin uses the same phrase in a sweeping claim about Indian abstinence; the body later says “some Indians” and names the Banians around Gujarat. These are distinct applications of a sensory classification, not verified social or religious generalizations.

The sensory capacity also differs from its current exercise. Sleep and waking belong to all sensible creatures, even though sleep is defined as a suspension of outward and common sense; the ensuing vapours-and-spirits explanation belongs to historical physiology. The “Sensitive power” is active in perceiving colour and passive when sunlight injures the eye or an object displeases a sense. A sensible thing first moves understanding, which then reasons from bodily to spiritual substance, while the preceding account also grants understanding innate notions. “Sensitive Appetite” names desire governed by sense, distinguished from rational will’s universal object and moral concern. Its subordination is imperfect: appetite often rebels, and in the love discussion the sensitive faculty generally, not invariably, overrules reason.

Susceptibility, clear speech and their opposites

People already melancholy or inclined to it are said to be “most sensible” to mockery and injury: they feel the insult sharply, magnify it and dwell on it. The surrounding passage condemns the mocker’s conduct, even when intended as amusement. Burton makes this a superlative comparison with all other living people, although the preceding discussion allows even wise people to be manipulated. The word describes vulnerability to distress; it does not mean that the sufferer is making the most reasonable assessment. In the despair section, “so sensible of his burthen” similarly means acutely feeling the weight of suffering. The belief that death will give relief belongs to the distressed person and is not affirmed as true.

A different sense is explicit in the French poet’s case. Tormented by the supposed persistent smell of an ointment, he is otherwise wise and discreet and “would talk sensibly, save only in this.” Sensibly here means with sound understanding. The exception is essential: the anecdote distinguishes a particular fixed belief from the speaker’s abilities in other matters.

Insensible has its own range. Pride can be a sly “insensible enemy,” one not perceived while it works. Vapours expelled in exercise are “insensible” because they cannot be perceived, not because they lack feelings. The symptom sequence “growes insensible, stupid or mad” instead describes a person becoming unresponsive or stupefied. Its surrounding account also attributes unusual perceived sounds to him, so insensible should not be made an exact modern diagnosis or an unqualified claim that all sensation has ceased.

In the deliberately minimizing consolation for jealousy, “an insensible smart” is a hurt not physically felt. The later Latin “vulnus insensibile” means a wound not felt; Burton follows it by asking whether the alleged infidelity is even certain. The figure attempts to diminish the injury by distinguishing it from bodily pain. It does not undo the emotional suffering his preceding descriptions acknowledge.

A related “too sensible a feeling” means an excessively acute awareness of misery. It occurs in an exception for some lovers who are physically weakened and near despair, when Burton’s authorities reverse the preceding restrictive regimen. The continuation is essential: he calls the proposed medicine mad, if permissible at all, and says that amusements can worsen one person while relieving another. The phrase identifies acute suffering within that qualified historical treatment discussion.

Unnoticed change, numbness and lost judgment

An “unsensible plague” is an unnoticed social evil in the attack on pettifoggers. Burton expressly exempts worthy lawyers and honours good laws in the continuation. The adjective concerns recognition of the alleged harm, while plague supplies the figurative comparison.

Insensibly marks a failure of awareness. Financial ruin can arrive “on a sudden” while a household is plunged into debt unawares; the adverb therefore does not always mean slowly. Self-love corrupts people without their noticing, and ascetics accused of pride in their humility are “insensibly mad,” unaware of their own condition. When initial dislike turns to love through familiarity, the modern adds gradually to the process but renders insensibly itself as without noticing it. Burton’s comparison with Benedick and Beatrice is a literary analogy. On another scale, the earth is “a point insensible” beside the whole cosmos: Burton paraphrases Tycho’s refusal to believe that the vast celestial bodies have no purpose except illuminating that minute point. Here insensible means imperceptibly small in comparison.

Senseless can describe objects without life. The Democritus of the retold Hippocratic letter contrasts treasured statues and pictures with living people whom their owners hate. Burton adds his own anti-Catholic application in the margin; it is not the ancient speaker’s remark. The other uses concern distinct failures of feeling or judgment. Niobe’s becoming stone is explained as grief leaving her numb and stupefied. The belief that one is “sensless and dead” belongs to the imagined conditions of the sick, not to an assertion that they have actually died. “Senseless Achans,” by contrast, are patrons denounced as morally unresponsive to their wrongdoing; their evasions about sin are the excuses Burton attacks.

Latin insensati often means without understanding or sound judgment. A marginal physiognomic claim says that people with small heads are generally so, preserving a qualification within an inherited theory. Burton calls vainglorious authors insensati for their mistaken hopes of literary fame. His claim that everyone is “senslesse” if the Stoic ideal of a wise person can nowhere be found is a conditional paradox. In prolonged melancholy, insensati accompanies “insensible of any wrongs”: he imagines people ridiculous to others but inwardly free from care, within his paradoxical consolation for folly. His lovers become insensati when lust outweighs reason; “the major part,” “ordinarily” and being thoroughly possessed qualify the claims. The accompanying animal transformations are moralized literary examples, not equivalent histories of willing lust.

An overpowering object of sense

“Sensible forte destruit sensum” means that an overpowering sensory object destroys the faculty of sense. Sensible is the object; sensum is the faculty affected. Burton’s own English narrows the illustration to sight: a strong object overcomes it. In the religious argument, inability to endure sunlight becomes a comparison for the greater radiance of the Creator, whose glory cannot be adequately represented through created beauties. The maxim’s grammatical roles matter: it does not say that a strong sensory faculty destroys an object. The earlier “Visibile forte destruit sensum” specifically names a powerful visible object, Visibile being a substantivized form of visibilis. The two maxims are related but differ in scope. The following claim that one can still less endure the Creator carries the Latin negative forward; it does not assert that the Creator is more endurable than sunlight.

Related entries

Animal and vegetal; Common sense; Species in perception; Faculty; Soul; Imagination; Apprehension; Love; Passion; Despair

Places to read

1. Lifeless possessions and living peopleSenslesse in Democritus’s reported complaint; Burton’s separate marginal polemic
2. The missing ideal wise personConditional universal senselessness, not bodily numbness
3. Plants, animals and political bodiesSensory creatures and the extended bodily analogy
4. An unnoticed social plagueThe variant unsensible and the explicit exemption for worthy lawyers
5. Financial ruin unawaresInsensibly can accompany sudden change
6. The hierarchy of facultiesReported alternatives and the common division
7. Sensitive power and perceptible objectPerceiving and being affected; retained representations; sensory capacity during sleep
8. Understanding and sensory appetitePerceptible beginnings, innate notions, sense-governed desire and its rebellion
9. The physiognomic marginInsensati with generally, among inherited accounts of susceptibility
10. Imagined absence of sensationSensless or dead as beliefs attributed to sufferers
11. Grief’s numbnessNiobe’s petrification read as stupefaction
12. Pride unnoticedThe insensible enemy
13. Literary vanity and unnoticed prideInsensati authors and ascetics unaware of their pride
14. Moral insensibilityThe senseless Achans and their condemned evasions
15. Sensitivity to insultSusceptibility distinguished from the mocker’s responsibility
16. Speaking sensiblyA particular impairment contrasted with sound conversation
17. Insensibility in a symptom sequenceStupefaction without a modern diagnostic identification
18. An imperceptible cosmic pointRelative scale, Tycho’s reported argument and the remaining uncertainties
19. Imperceptible vapoursAn object too subtle to be perceived
20. Sensation in a social hierarchyCreatures with senses deployed in a theological defence of unequal ranks
21. Unawareness as paradoxical consolationInsensati and insensible of wrongs, qualified by longstanding disease
22. Living objects of affectionThe synopsis’s sensible objects and the living/lifeless contrast
23. Sentient loveFive causes of animal love, including distinct familiarity and nurturing; the sensitive faculty generally overruling reason
24. Animal love’s greater violenceA comparative argument from alleged plant-love to sentient creatures
25. Attachment developing unnoticedFamiliarity and the comic analogy of Benedick and Beatrice
26. Judgment lost in erotic passionMost and ordinarily, with moralized transformations
27. Excessively acute miseryA qualified treatment exception and the warning that remedies may worsen symptoms
28. A hurt not physically feltThe minimizing rhetoric and doubt about its premise
29. Sense overwhelmedThe sensory object, faculty and application to divine glory
30. The English margin on abstinenceSensible creatures in a sweeping margin, with the body’s some Indians
31. A burden acutely feltThe sufferer’s perception in religious despair

In this edition

The equivalents separate these senses: “sensibles” becomes “creatures with senses”; “Sensitive” remains “sensitive”; “sensible Soul,” “sensitive soul”; “sensible or passible quality,” “perceptible or ‘passible’ quality”; “most sensible,” “most sensitive”; and “Sensible love,” “Sentient love.” In contrast, the poet still speaks “sensibly,” preserving the ordinary judgment-related meaning. “Insensible vapours” becomes “imperceptible vapours,” while “insensible smart” becomes “a pain not physically felt.”

The sensory maxim and Burton’s following English explanation are translated separately: the Latin concerns sense generally, the English specifies sight. These terms describe historical psychology and its literary applications; the source’s clinical claims and comparisons are not converted into modern diagnoses.

The article retains the printed Latin Sensible, indexed under the adjective family sensibilis rather than silently repairing its letters. Substantival Visibile and Sensible receive an explicit English object; the Latin wound phrase receives an English article. Elsewhere an adjective phrase becomes a finite clause: “so sensible of his burthen” becomes “So acutely does he feel his burden.” Insensibly may become a whole clause about not noticing, while the original coordination “sensless and dead” becomes “without sensation or dead.” These constructional choices are identified separately from the local lexical definitions. The original English margin about sensible creatures has no separate modern translation; its editorial explanation is not a second original attestation.

insensatus · insensati · local use 1

Printed “insensati” (Latin; plural predicate adjective).

Lacking understanding or judgment; foolish.

Context: The original Latin margin attributes a physiognomic generalization to Aristotle. Plerúmq; limits it to generally; neither the generalization nor its attribution is independently validated. This is not a claim of physical numbness.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Qui parvum caput habent, insensati plerúmq; sunt

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Those with small heads are generally senseless

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original Latin marginal quotation aligned with its separate editorial translation in the same note, not with the English body. The qualified generally belongs to plerúmq; rather than to the adjective.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

insensatus · insensati · local use 2

Printed “insensati” (Latin; plural adjective).

Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: insensati

Without sound judgment; foolish.

Context: Burton’s satire places vainglorious writers under the supposed judgment of all wise men. The insult concerns their deluded hopes of fame and literary survival, not bodily insensibility.

Source: original body

Locator qualification: Do not remove bracketed or repeated-page qualifier.

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: senseless

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase or construction alignment; the whole unit carries the rendering.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

insensatus · insensati · local use 3

Printed “insensati” (Latin; plural predicate adjective).

Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: insensati

Without understanding or sound judgment.

Context: If melancholy is inveterate, Burton describes sufferers as mostly deluded or wholly mad. This qualified historical claim enters a paradoxical consolation in which lack of awareness can lessen felt misery.

Source: original body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: without understanding

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase or construction alignment; the whole unit carries the rendering.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

insensatus · insensati · local use 4

Printed “insensati” (Latin; plural adjective with English gloss).

Without sound judgment or self-command.

Context: Burton claims most lovers choose a ruinous course despite reason’s warnings, then interprets animal transformations as moral allegory. The mixed mythological examples are not equivalent cases of voluntary lust, as the supplied note explains.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: insensati void of sense

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: “senseless,” devoid of judgement

Alignment convention

Qualification: Latin insensati and Burton’s separate English void of sense are rendered separately as senseless and devoid of judgement. The entire mixed-language unit is aligned, not assigned to the Latin alone.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

insensatus · insensati · local use 5

Printed “insensati” (Latin; plural adjective).

Without sound judgment; insani separately supplies mad.

Context: The claim concerns people thoroughly possessed by the passion and is qualified by ordinarily; the catalogue of violent acts is Burton’s moralizing rhetoric. It does not establish that every lover commits them.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: insensati & insani

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: senseless and mad

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase or construction alignment; the whole unit carries the rendering.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

insensible · local use 1

Printed “insensible” (English; lemma).

Not perceived or noticed; describes self-love’s covert operation.

Context: Metaphor of an unnoticed enemy, not one incapable of perception.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: a slie insensible enemy, not perceived

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: a stealthy enemy that slips past our awareness

Alignment convention

Qualification: The adjective insensible and the following passive not perceived are combined as the relative clause that slips past our awareness. Our makes the implied perceivers explicit.

Supplied words: our (implied perceivers made explicit)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

insensible · local use 2

Printed “insensible” (English; lemma).

Unresponsive or dulled in awareness, alongside stupefaction in a historical symptom description.

Context: The same sequence reports hearing sounds others do not; no universal absence of all sensation is inferred.

Source: original body

Source wording: growes insensible, stupid or mad

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

insensible · local use 3

Printed “insensible” (English; adjective).

Unaware of or unresponsive to an injury or wrong.

Context: In Burton’s conditional description of longstanding melancholy, others ridicule the sufferers while they themselves are said to feel happy and secure. Secure here means free from care, not medically safe.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: insensible of any wrongs

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: unaware of any wrongs done to them

Alignment convention

Qualification: Done to them explicitly supplies the relation implicit in wrongs and the suffering people as its recipients.

Supplied words: done to them (injury and recipient relation made explicit)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

insensible smart

Printed “insensible smart” (English; phrase).

A hurt without bodily sensation, used to minimize the injury of jealousy.

Context: Rhetorical consolation, not a denial that the jealous person suffers emotionally.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: an insensible smart

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: a pain not physically felt

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase alignment; the entire phrase, not each component separately, carries the stated rendering.

Supplied words: physically (contextual restriction made explicit)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

insensible vapours

Printed “insensible vapours” (English; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: insensible vapours

Vapours not perceived by the senses, in the historical explanation of bodily waste removal.

Context: The adjective describes the expelled material, not an unfeeling patient.

Source: original body

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

insensibly · local use 1

Printed “insensibly” (English; adverb).

Without noticing or realizing what is happening.

Context: People’s fortunes founder through varied losses and bad management. On a sudden appears immediately before; insensibly marks unawareness, not necessarily gradual change.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: at unawares precipitated insensibly into an inextricable labyrinth

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: before they realise it they are plunged into an inescapable labyrinth

Alignment convention

Qualification: The overlapping at unawares and insensibly are combined as before they realise it. The modern gives the compressed passive an explicit they are; the labyrinth metaphor remains.

Supplied words: they are (subject and passive auxiliary made explicit)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

insensibly · local use 2

Printed “insensibly” (English; adverb).

Without being noticed by those affected.

Context: This refers to self-love: it can overcome people untouched by other passions. The person’s failure to notice the corruption is the point, not self-love’s inability to feel.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: this will slily and insensibly pervert us

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: this will quietly corrupt us without our noticing

Alignment convention

Qualification: Insensibly becomes the clause without our noticing. Our explicitly identifies the perceivers already present as us.

Supplied words: our (perceivers resumed from us)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

insensibly · local use 3

Printed “insensibly” (English; adverb).

Without awareness of one’s own condition.

Context: Burton applies the phrase polemically to ascetics who despise glory yet, he claims, are proud of that contempt. Their self-estimate and his accusation differ.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: insensibly mad, and know not of it

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: mad without knowing it

Alignment convention

Qualification: The adverb and its explanatory and know not of it are combined as without knowing it. The redundancy is compressed, not assigned solely to the adjective mad.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

insensibly · local use 4

Printed “insensibly” (English; adverb).

Without noticing or recognizing the developing attachment.

Context: Burton describes familiarity overcoming initial dislike, using Benedick and Beatrice as a comic analogy. At last and the surrounding process support the modern gradually; gradualness is not an invariant meaning of insensibly.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: begin at last to dote insensibly one upon another

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: gradually begin to fall in love without noticing it

Alignment convention

Qualification: Insensibly supplies without noticing it; at last and the prolonged-familiarity context support gradually. The reciprocal one upon another is implicit in fall in love within that context, not separately rendered.

Supplied words: gradually (explicit development from at last and the surrounding process); it (the developing love made the object of noticing)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

point insensible

Printed “point insensible” (English; noun phrase).

A point too small to perceive in comparison with the larger whole.

Context: Burton paraphrases Tycho’s refusal to believe that enormous celestial bodies exist solely to illuminate the comparatively minute earth. The assertion is relative to cosmic scale; subsequent questions preserve uncertainty about inhabitants and human centrality.

Source: original body

Source wording: a point insensible, in respect of the whole

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

senseless · senslesse · local use 1

Printed “senslesse” (English; adjective).

Without sensation or life; describes statues, pictures and other costly possessions.

Context: Democritus, in the retold Hippocratic letter, contrasts treasured lifeless images with hated living people. Burton’s anti-Catholic addition in the accompanying note is separate from that ancient narrative voice.

Source: original body

Source wording: many senslesse things

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

senseless · senslesse · local use 2

Printed “senslesse” (English; adjective).

Lacking wisdom or sound judgment; foolish.

Context: Burton presses a Stoic ideal of the wise person into a conditional universal conclusion: if such a man exists nowhere, everyone falls into the opposite category. This is an argumentative paradox, not literal loss of sensation.

Source: original body

Source wording: we all are slaves, senslesse, or worse

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

senseless · sensless · local use 1

Printed “sensless” (English; adjective).

Without sensation or feeling.

Context: These conditions belong to patients’ imagined beliefs about themselves in Burton’s account after Weyer and Agrippa; their actual loss of sensation or death is not asserted.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: sensless and dead

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: without sensation or dead

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern changes original and to or within a list of imagined conditions. Both constructions are recorded without silently treating the coordination as identical.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

senseless · sensless · local use 2

Printed “sensless” (English; adjective).

Numb or unresponsive through grief.

Context: Burton explains Niobe’s mythical petrification through grief’s effects, citing Vives and Sabinus. Stupid here means stupefied; the paired terms do not simply call her unintelligent.

Source: original body

Locator qualification: Do not remove bracketed or repeated-page qualifier.; This source group includes repeated printed 96–97 and supplied 98–99; see SUPPLIED_OPENING and SOURCE_DJR_040.

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: for grief she was sensless and stupid

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: grief left her numb and senseless

Alignment convention

Qualification: The whole coordinated predicate is aligned. The modern recasts for grief she was as grief left her and renders the pair sensless and stupid by numb and senseless; no rigid one-word correspondence is claimed.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

senseless

Printed “senseless” (English; adjective).

Morally unresponsive or lacking judgment, especially with respect to fear of wrongdoing.

Context: Burton’s biblical invective attacks simoniacal dealers and patrons. The following excuses that the conduct is no sin or no great sin belong to the people he condemns, not his own approval.

Source: original body

Source wording: our senseless Achans

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

sensibilis

Printed “Sensible” (Latin; substantivized neuter adjective; printed shortened form).

A sensible object or stimulus, made overwhelming by forte, acting on the sensory power.

Context: Object is grammatical subject; sensory faculty is the thing destroyed. Burton’s English next specifies sight.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Sensible forte destruit sensum

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: An overpowering object of sense destroys the faculty of sense

Alignment convention

Qualification: The printed Latin Sensible is retained exactly; the dictionary family is sensibilis, with substantivized neuter sensibile. The modern supplies an article and makes the object-of-sense construction explicit; forte supplies overpowering. Sensum receives the explanatory faculty of sense.

Supplied words: An (English article supplied); object of (explicit noun phrase for substantival Sensible); the faculty of (article and explanatory gloss of sensum)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

sensible · sensibles

Printed “sensibles” (English; lemma).

Beings capable of sensation, contrasted with plants.

Context: Burton extends his account beyond humans and distinguishes circumstantial from naturally Saturnine melancholy.

Source: original body

Source wording: vegetals and sensibles

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

sensible · local use 1

Printed “sensible” (English; lemma).

Capable of feeling, transferred by analogy to organized communities.

Context: Body-politic comparison attributed to Botero; not a claim that a state literally has sensory organs.

Source: original body

Source wording: politick bodies are likewise sensible

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

sensible · local use 2

Printed “sensible” (English; lemma).

Perceptible to a sense and able to affect it; here qualifies the quality that is the faculty’s object.

Context: Object of the faculty, not the perceiving subject; passible retains Burton’s technical qualification.

Source: original body

Source wording: a sensible or passible quality

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

sensible · most sensible

Printed “most sensible” (English; lemma).

Printed form, Source wording: most sensible

Most susceptible to feeling an affront or injury deeply.

Context: Burton makes a superlative claim about melancholy people, of all other men living, while condemning derision. The preceding passage also says even a wise person may be manipulated; vulnerability is not confined to this group.

Source: original body

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

sensible · local use 3

Printed “sensible” (English; lemma).

Acutely aware of or affected by suffering.

Context: Describes the distressed person’s state and belief; Burton does not endorse the expectation of relief through death.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: so sensible of his burthen

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: So acutely does he feel his burden

Alignment scope: redistributed clause construction

Qualification: The original adjective phrase so sensible of his burthen is recast as a finite clause, So acutely does he feel his burden. Does supplies English clause syntax and he explicitly resumes the sufferer from the surrounding sentence.

Supplied words: does he (finite-clause construction and contextual subject made explicit)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

sensible · too sensible

Printed “too sensible” (English; modified adjective phrase).

Excessively acute or keen in awareness of suffering; too marks the excess.

Context: This introduces an exception for some deeply dejected and physically weakened lovers. Burton subsequently calls the proposed medicine mad if permissible at all, and warns that amusements help some and worsen others.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: too sensible a feeling of their misery

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: an excessively keen sense of their misery

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original too sensible a feeling becomes an excessively keen sense. Their misery supplies the object felt in both; excess belongs to too, not to sensible by itself.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

sensible creatures · local use 1

Printed “sensible creatures” (English; noun phrase).

Living beings capable of sensation.

Context: Sleep and waking are said to be common to all such creatures. Capacity remains distinct from its current exercise: sleep suspends external and common sense, while the account leaves imagination and reason free. Its wording imagination alone plus reason remains a source tension.

Source: original body

Source wording: common to all sensible creatures

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

sensible creatures · local use 2

Printed “sensible creatures” (English; noun phrase).

Animals or living creatures possessing sensation.

Context: Burton places plants and animals beneath rational human beings and uses that hierarchy to defend social subordination as divinely appointed. The theological-political conclusion is his argument, not established by the word itself.

Source: original body

Source wording: sensible creatures feed on vegetals

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

sensible creatures · local use 3

Printed “sensible creatures” (English; noun phrase).

Animals or creatures capable of sensation.

Context: Burton argues from alleged erotic frenzy in plants to greater violence and visibility in animals. The premise draws on literary and reported botanical examples, not an independently verified botanical demonstration.

Source: original body

Source wording: what shall we think of sensible creatures

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

sensible creatures · local use 4

Printed “sensible creatures” (English; noun phrase).

Living creatures capable of sensation.

Context: Burton’s English margin generalizes about Indian abstinence while his body later specifies some Indians and the Banians around Gujarat. The religious labels and hostile framing are historical claims, not verified descriptions of whole populations.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Modern rendering, Modern wording, Original construction, Modern construction: The Gentiles in India will eat no sensible creatures, or ought that hath bloud in it.

Alignment convention

Qualification: This is original English marginal wording, not a Latin-to-English alignment. No separate modern translation of the margin is supplied; the same text is preserved for retrieval. The modern editorial explanation, not the original wording, supplies creatures capable of sensation.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

sensible love

Printed “Sensible love” (English; phrase).

Printed form, Source wording: Sensible love

Love belonging to creatures with sensation, exemplified by animals.

Context: Burton follows Leone Ebreo’s division of natural, sentient and rational love. Five causes are enumerated: mating pleasure, preservation of species and offspring, affinity of kind, familiarity, and nurturing; the last two remain distinct.

Source: original body

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

sensible objects

Printed “sensible objects” (English; noun phrase).

Sentient living beings considered as pleasant objects of affection; the animal examples support this contextual reading.

Context: The synopsis moves from lifeless artefacts to animals and then people. The body likewise contrasts living and lifeless pleasant objects and warns that excessive attachment, rather than their intrinsic goodness, may cause melancholy.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: sensible objects, as hauks, hounds, horses

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: objects of the senses, such as hawks, hounds and horses

Alignment convention

Qualification: The supplied modern chooses objects of the senses, a passive perceptibility reading. The living/lifeless contrast supports the related sentient-creature sense in the original; the definition is a contextual interpretation, not a claim that the modern explicitly says sentient.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

sensible soul

Printed “sensible Soul” (English; phrase).

The soul or faculty by which an organized living body senses and moves.

Context: Subsection heading, developed in the next two units.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Of the sensible Soul

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: The sensitive soul

Alignment scope: heading construction

Qualification: The topic-heading construction Of the sensible Soul becomes the noun heading The sensitive soul; Of has no separate counterpart. Sensible is rendered sensitive within that changed heading syntax.

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

sensible species

Printed “sensible species” (English; phrase).

Representations received through sensation and available to internal senses.

Context: Future, past and absent things are represented through forms previously in sense.

Source: original body

Source wording: the sensible species

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

sensible thing

Printed “sensible thing” (English; noun phrase).

Something that can be perceived through sensation.

Context: The perceptible thing first moves understanding; reasoning then proceeds to bodily and spiritual substance. The preceding account also allows innate notions in understanding, so this statement should not erase that distinction.

Source: original body

Source wording: some sensible thing

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

sensibly

Printed “sensibly” (English; lemma).

Rationally or with sound understanding; the governing verb talk supplies the speaking, and save only in this restricts the claim around one fixed belief.

Context: Laurentius’s reported poet; the restriction save only in this must remain.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: he would talk sensibly, save only in this

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: he would speak sensibly except on this one subject

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase alignment; the entire phrase, not each component separately, carries the stated rendering.

Supplied words: one subject (explicit referent of the original this)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

sensitive

Printed “Sensitive” (English; lemma).

Concerned with sensation; names the middle faculty, which includes the nutritive powers.

Context: The common threefold division follows alternative accounts of souls and reason in beasts. Lower powers can exist without higher ones, not conversely. Burton admits that their distinction and connection seem beyond human capacity.

Source: original body

Source wording: Vegetal, Sensitive, and Rational

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

sensitive appetite

Printed “Sensitive Appetite” (English; noun phrase).

Desire or appetite governed by sensation, directed here to a particular good or bad object.

Context: The contrast is with will’s universal immaterial object and concern for moral honour. The following discussion says lower appetite often rebels, rather than assuming perfect obedience to reason.

Source: original body

Source wording: the Sensitive Appetite hath a particular object

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

sensitive faculty

Printed “sensitive faculty” (English; noun phrase).

The sense-governed appetitive power, contrasted with reason.

Context: After Valesius’s account of human love affecting appetite and reason, Burton says the former generally overrules the latter. Most part is retained; the body’s heart affected by both differs from the margin’s compressed organ assignment.

Source: original body

Source wording: The sensitive faculty most part over-rules reason

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

sensitive power

Printed “Sensitive power” (English; noun phrase).

The capacity for sensation, considered in its exercise or in its being affected.

Context: Burton contrasts the eye seeing colour with its being injured by sunlight, and adds unpleasant sound or smell. Active and passive describe roles of the same sensory power.

Source: original body

Source wording: the Sensitive power is Active or Passive

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

unsensible

Printed “unsensible” (English; adjective; printed variant related to insensible).

Not perceived or noticed, here describing a social evil.

Context: Burton calls proliferating disreputable lawyers an unnoticed plague, then invokes Mat. Geraldus and other polemical authorities. The next paragraph explicitly limits his attack to hungry pettifoggers and honours all good laws and worthy lawyers. The plague is figurative, not a literal epidemic.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: an unsensible plague

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: an unnoticed plague

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope noun phrases: original unsensible is rendered unnoticed; the adjective describes the metaphorical plague.

Notes: Complete paired 013-23–27 and all attached notes read; original unsens- searched across all 8,755 body records and Burton-labelled note containers. No new historical-witness collation.

visibilis

Printed “Visibile” (Latin; substantivized neuter adjective).

A visible object, expressed by a substantivized neuter adjective. Forte makes it excessively powerful in the maxim.

Context: The object is subject and the sense is what it destroys. This version specifies the visible, whereas the later Sensible maxim uses the more general sensory-object term.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Visibile forte destruit sensum

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: an excessively powerful visible object destroys the sense

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern supplies an and object to render substantival Visibile; excessively powerful renders forte. The full axiom preserves subject and object roles.

Supplied words: an (English article supplied); object (noun supplied for substantivized adjective)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

vulnus insensibile

Printed “vulnus insensibile” (Latin; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: vulnus insensibile

A wound without physical sensation.

Context: Burton provisionally takes the worst case of suspected infidelity, then immediately asks whether it is even real. The absence of bodily pain serves a minimizing consolation, not a denial of emotional suffering.

Source: original body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: a wound not felt

Alignment convention

Qualification: Latin noun phrase aligned with its modern noun phrase; a is an English article supplied. The separately modernized English explanation makes the bodily restriction explicit.

Supplied words: a (English article supplied)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.