a. (sb.) [SUPER- 4 a.]
That is above the sensible; beyond what is perceptible by the senses.
1803. [implied in b.].
1828–32. Webster (citing Murdock).
1847. Emerson, Repr. Men, Uses Gt. Men, Wks. (Bohn), I. 280. Genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, and draws their map.
1862. Stephen, Ess. Barrister, 325. An apparently necessary relation … between the sensible phenomenon and the supersensible reality.
a. 1881. A. Barratt, Phys. Metempiric (1883), 20. It cannot … give any solidity or reality to a supersensible hypothesis.
B. absol. or as sb. That which is supersensible.
1803. Edin. Rev., I. 254. The glory of illuminating his countrymen in purisms and supersensibles.
1856. Masson, Ess. Biog. & Crit., 34. In Shakespeare … there was … a tendency towards the supersensible and invisible.
1881. Shairp, Asp. Poetry, iii. 69. So far then poetry and religion are akin, that both hold of the unseen, the supersensible.
Hence Supersensibly adv.
1868. A. B. Alcott, Tablets, 16. A creed dealing thus supersensibly with the elements must have fertilizing properties, and bring the gardener to his task little tinctured by noxious notions of any kind.
