in rerum naturaphr.

1583 B. Melbancke Philotimus (new ed.) sig. ff.ij There is no vacum of her fame in rerum natura, all the world ringes of it.

1584 R. Scot Discouerie Witchcraft xiii. v. 292 Such as except we had seene..we would not beleeue to be In rerum natura.

1656 R. Sanderson 20 Serm. vii. 145 We must..see if we can leave it upon Adam. For did not he sell us many a fair year before we were in rerum naturâ?

1686 J. Dunton Lett. from New Eng. (1867) 21 Stuff'd with Wonders of my own Invention, and such as never were in rerum natura.

1703 City & Country Builder 5 A confused Composure of Figures of different Natures, and Sexes, etc. As of Men, Beasts, Birds, Flowers, Fishes, etc. And such like Fancies as are not in Rerum Natura.

1756 J. Wesley Let. 6 Jan. (1931) III. 368 There is no hell in rerum natura, ‘no such place in the universe’.

1836 W. P. Wood Speech in Support of Bill for Stephenson's Line of Railway LSE Selected Pamphlets 11 What was this plan? Was it a plan that could be found in rerum natura?

1892 Harvard Law Rev. 6 43 The bailor has, so long as the chattel bailed is in rerum natura, something more than this right of action,—namely, the title.

1906 S. S. Laurie Synthetica I. iii. 39 A nucleation or involution or articulation or specific determination of Universal Being whereby an independent centre of actuality is constituted in rerum natura.

1978 R. Torretti Philos. of Geom. 1. 33 If space is assumed to exist somehow in rerum natura, it is almost inevitable to think of geometry as a natural science.

2008 Pluralist 3 28 Conjunctive relations and transitions among objects exist in rerum natura.