[f. next: see -ENCE.]
1. The quality or condition of being consentient; agreement of opinion.
1879. H. S. Wilson in 19th Cent., No. 32. 679. There is a full consentience of contemporary historical witnesses.
2. A term applied to denote the sensuous equivalent, in unconscious, involuntary, or reflex action, of consciousness in conscious action; the consensus or synthesis of impressions that takes place in the sentient organism apart from consciousness, and by which responsive acts are induced.
1877. Lewes, Phys. Basis of Mind, 357. Thus the gradations of sensitive reaction are Sentience, Consentience, and Consciousness … we may say that a man sometimes acts unconsciously, or thinks unconsciously, although his action and thought are ruled by Consentience. Ibid., 361. Has a bee consciousness?… The bee feels and reacts on feelings; but its feelings cannot closely resemble our own…. We should therefore say the bee has Consentience, but not Consciousness.
1889. Mivart, Truth, 183. As … these sensations may … be felt without consciousness, we require a term to express the faculty we have of receiving them all, in one unity of our being (one sensorium) apart from consciousness. The best term to denote this faculty, seems to be ‘consentience.’… It is by this faculty of ‘consentience’ that the unconscious sleep-walker receives and accurately responds to the varied impressions which surrounding objects make upon his organs.
