What is "benumbment"

Usage examples of "benumbment".

Here's in the regions of year-long snow and ice, where, in winter, even the waters of the Barents Sea ran a milky white, to find this ebony mass towering fifteen hundred vertical feet up into the grey overcast evoked the same feeling of total disbelief, the same numbing impact, although here magnified a hundredfold, as does the first glimpse of the black cliff of the north face of the Eiger rearing up its appalling grandeur among the snows of the Bernese Oberland: this benumbment of the senses stemmed from a dichotomous struggle to accept the evidence before the eyes for while reason said that it had to be so that primeval part of the mind that existed long before man knew what reason was just flatly refused to accept it.

The apology for this benumbment, if I may so call it, will suggest itself to the thoughtful reader.