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The early sound doctrine was that fossil remains were lusus naturae freaks of nature and in 1517 Fracastor was violently attacked because he thought them something more. No less a man than Bernard Palissy followed up the contest, on the right side, in France, but it required 150 years to carry the day fairly against this single preposterous theory.
'It was probably some bazar rumour. he said; 'but even then He referred to the paper in his hand. 'Hang it all, the thing was only decided within the last forty-eight hours. 'Are there many more like you in India? said Father Victor, 'or are you by way o' being a lusus naturae? 'Now I have told you, said the boy, 'will you let me go back to my old man?
His gems were interesting; especially the agate, with the lusus naturae in it a most wonderful semblance of Cupid riding on the lion; and the "Jew's stone," with the lion-headed serpent enchased in it; both of which the secretary agreed to buy the latter as a reinforcement of his preventives against the gout, which gave him such severe twinges that it was plain enough how intolerable it would be if he were not well supplied with rings of rare virtue, and with an amulet worn close under the right breast.
After much debate, they concluded unanimously that I was only relplum scalcath, which is interpreted literally, lusus naturae; a determination exactly agreeable to the modern philosophy of Europe: whose professors, disdaining the old evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of Aristotle endeavored in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advancement of human knowledge.
As he listened he thought of his eldest son, partly imbecile, all but a lusus naturae, separated from his wife immediately after marriage, through whom there could never be succession he thought of him, and for the millionth time in his life winced in impotent disdain.
The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished the whales from the waters, he states as follows: "On account of their warm bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem," and finally, "ex lege naturae jure meritoque."
So he paced with care the circular area he had noticed, and wrote down its rough dimensions in his pocket-book. Then he proceeded to examine an oblong eminence which lay east of the centre of the circle, and seemed to his thinking likely to be the base of a platform or altar. At one end of it, the northern, a patch of the turf was gone removed by some boy or other creature ferae naturae.
At least in so far as it places the foedera naturae above the gods and attributes some freedom of will and action to men, for as we have seen in both of these matters Vergil agrees with Lucretius. But there is one apparent difficulty in that Vergil, contrary to his teacher's usual practice, permits the interference of the gods in human action.
'The desire of bettering our condition and the fear of making it worse, like the vis medicatrix in physics, is the vis medicatrix naturae in politics, and is continually counteracting the disorders arising from narrow human institutions. It is only because the poor-laws have not quite destroyed it, that they have not quite ruined the country.
But that signifies nothing; I suppose I shall be expected by and by to lend a hand to carry Squire Hector out upon his litter, while he indulges his sportsmanlike propensities by shooting my pigeons, or my turkeys I think any of the ferae naturae are safe from him for one while."
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