natural fool

plural natural fools

1. archaicOne whose foolishness is not a pretend performance, but rather often stemming from intellectual disability.

   But infants, natural fools, mad-men in their fits, are neither fit to consent, nor to be members in the Christian visible Church, […]

   1654, John, Tombs, Anti-Paedobaptism

   3 more examples

   […]which is absurd and groundless as to conclude there is no such thing as Reason and Demonstration because a natural fool cannot reach unto it.

   1658, Heydon, John, 1629-, A new method of Rosie Crucian physick: wherein is shewed the cause; and therewith their experienced medicines for the cure of all diseases […]

   To begin with he resembles the candidate rather closely, for while an idiot or natural fool cannot vote, the vote of a lunatic given during a lucid interval is good.

   1909, The Tatler 1901-1929

   Since it was common to laugh at the naiveté and difficulties of such persons, the social sense of the fool was extended to include actors, comedians, and jesters, who imitated the ridiculous behavior of the natural fool. We continue to laugh at the type today.

   1999, Midelfort, H. C. Erik, A history of madness in sixteenth-century Germany