A man may be as much a fool from the want of sensibility as the want of sense.

Jameson’s aphorism challenges the idea that folly is merely an intellectual defect. She distinguishes between “sense” (reason, judgment) and “sensibility” (emotional responsiveness, moral feeling, sympathy), arguing that a deficiency in either can make a person equally foolish. The remark implies that coldness, callousness, or an inability to feel appropriately can lead to errors in conduct and perception just as surely as poor reasoning can. In a broader nineteenth-century context—when “sensibility” was often treated as a cultivated moral faculty—the line reads as a defense of emotional intelligence and humane responsiveness as essential components of wisdom.