Key Words, Figures and Places

Key Words

Traherne’s vocabulary looks modern and often is not. Several of his commonest words had senses in the 1660s and 1670s that have since faded, so that want means lack, sensible means aware and resentment means feeling, while others carry the weight of the schools, such as capacity, fruition and principles. The entries below give the sense current in his day, the place where the book first uses each word, and what the word is doing there. They do not follow the words further, since much of the argument lies in what the book makes of them, and the notes refer to them by headword.

Admire, admiration To admire was to wonder at, to be astonished by, and admiration was wonder (Latin admiratio), with no necessary note of approval. The word first appears at I.18, in the sentence that also first names felicity, where to lose oneself in wonder at the variety and beauty of the world is called a happy loss.

Apostasy A falling away (Greek apostasia, a standing off), a theological word used of the angels who fell, of Adam, and of those who desert the faith. The period often spelled it apostacy. It first appears at II.89, “the least intermission would be an eternal apostacy”. Traherne is contrasting earth, where God overlooks the soul’s wandering attention, with heaven, where a moment’s lapse would be a falling away and union with God makes any lapse impossible.

Apprehension The mind’s laying hold of a thing (Latin apprehendere, to seize), so perception, understanding, or a way of conceiving. It never has the modern sense of dread. It first appears in the prayers before the Passion, “in the sight and apprehension of Thy love” (I.89), for the soul’s grasp of Christ’s love, in whose sight even groans are sweet.

Capacity, capable Capable means able to receive or contain, having room for something (Latin capax), and capacity is that power of receiving, the soul’s room, which the schoolmen set against act as what a thing can become but is not yet. Capable comes first, in the second sentence of the book, “It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing” (I.1), of the empty notebook and the infant’s soul. Capacity follows at I.99, “He made us the sons of God in capacity”.

Communicate, communication To communicate was to impart, to give a share of, to make common, and also to share in, and so to receive Communion, while communication was imparting and fellowship and also a hidden passage of influence between things. The book first uses the verb of the author’s own gift to his friend, “in communicating most enriching Truths” (I.1), an act of love both to her and to truth. At I.2 “some invisible communications” run between the lodestone, the natural magnet, and the iron it draws.

Conversation, converse To converse was to keep company with, to have familiar dealings with, and conversation meant one’s whole manner of life as well as company and society. Talk was only a small part of it. St Paul’s conversation in heaven (Philippians 3:20) is a manner of life, and the verb first appears at II.18, “you shall converse with His wisdom, goodness, and power above all worlds”, of the soul that enjoys the world as God does.

Custom Habit and established usage, the received manners and opinions of a society, and the second nature that habit makes. Moral writers of the period often set it against nature. It first appears at I.8, “an evil habit and custom have made it difficult to think well, not Nature”, explaining why right thinking about the world, which is natural and easy, has come to seem hard.

Enjoy, enjoyment, fruition To enjoy was to have the use and benefit of a thing and to take delight in it, and in law simply to possess, as one enjoys an estate. Fruition is the learned twin, from the schoolmen’s fruitio, the delighted possession of a thing as an end and not a means. Fruition comes first, at I.5, “our fruition of it the end for which our Saviour suffered”, and enjoy follows at I.6, where to enjoy the world is to be raised to God’s throne and to see His love in it.

Felicity Happiness in its highest and final form, blessedness, the soul’s complete good (Latin felicitas), and the word philosophers and divines used for the end of human life. Traherne often uses the plainer happiness as its equal. It first appears at I.18, “an happy loss to lose oneself in admiration at one’s own Felicity”, of a soul that loses itself in wonder at the boundless world and finds God in exchange for itself.

Heir One who inherits by right of birth or by gift and holds the inheritance as his own. The word is scriptural, from the promise to Abraham (Romans 4:13) and from St Paul’s heirs of God (Romans 8:17), and it echoes the Prayer Book Catechism, where the baptised child is made an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. It first appears at I.3, “Is it not a great thing that you should be Heir of the World?”, naming the great thing the author has promised his friend, that she shall possess the whole world.

Infinite, infinity Without bound or end, in extent, number, time or worth (Latin infinitus), a word that strictly belongs to God but was also, then as now, a strong way of saying very. It is first used in just that loose way at I.3, where the truths the author offers are “infinitely profitable, but not esteemed”, and the noun comes at I.100, “all Angels and the Eternity and Infinity of God are in me”.

Principles Beginnings and sources (Latin principium), the powers and dispositions from which action springs, and also the settled truths or rules a person holds and lives by. The word first appears at I.19, “In the knowledge of your Powers, Inclinations, and Principles”, where self-knowledge is said to lie chiefly in knowing the soul’s inner endowment, in which the image of God is seated.

Prize, esteem To prize was to value, to set a price or rate on a thing, truly or falsely, and esteem as a noun was valuation and then the regard that follows it. Both words come from the market and from the language of justice, which gives each thing its due. Esteem appears first, in the same phrase of I.3 as the first infinite, and prize comes at I.12, “you were made to prize them according to their value”, where prizing becomes a debt of justice.

Proprieties Property and ownership, especially exclusive and private ownership, so that a propriety is a thing owned as one’s own, or, as Dobell noted, what would now be called a property. It has nothing to do with decorum. It first appears at I.33, among the evils that men’s invented riches let into the world, “particular and feeble interests, false proprieties, insatiable longings”, private claims that fence off what God made common.

Resentments Feelings and sentiments, the inward sense a person has of things, pleasant or painful, which Dobell called the word’s original and proper sense. It is never grievance. It first appears at I.85, where men who shut themselves up with things at home “despise the resentments of every soul”, ignoring what every soul in every age has felt.

Sensible Aware, feelingly conscious, as in to be sensible of a thing, and also perceptible to the senses. It never has the modern sense of reasonable. It first appears at I.9, “could we always be sensible of their use and value”, of keeping the goods of the world always in mind, which would be always to delight in them.

Treasure, treasures A store of precious things, riches held as one’s own. In Traherne it is the word for whatever is truly valuable and truly one’s own, set against the riches men contrive. It first appears at I.18, “all those infinite and eternal Treasures that are to abide for ever”, of the whole of God’s creation, the heavens and the angels and the goods that outlast the Day of Judgment.

Want, wants Lack, need, the state of being without, and from it the felt need or desire that answers the lack, so that as a verb it means to lack or to need and not simply to wish. It first appears at I.33, “the burden and cumber of devised wants”, of the artificial needs that men make for themselves along with the riches they invent.

Figures

People enter the Centuries as companions, authorities and examples rather than as characters, and they are gathered here by the parts the book first gives them, with the meditation where each is first met.

The friend addressed. The first figure is the woman of the Inscription, who gave the notebook and is the “you” of the First and Second Centuries. She is met in the act of giving, “since Love made you put it into my hands” (I.1), and she is named only by her office, most warmly at I.80, “My excellent friend”, in a meditation Traherne cancelled. Her best friend in the Inscription is most naturally Christ. The author himself, the “I” who writes, appears only in glimpses at first, recalling his infant eyes (I.25) or leaving his father’s house in the words of a psalm (I.92).

The biblical figures. God is Maker, Father and Love from the Inscription on. Jesus Christ enters at I.5 as the one through whom God calls us to glory, and from I.62 the book prays to him directly, while the Holy Ghost is first named at I.10. Adam appears at I.7, in Eden before the Fall, and Eve at II.12, where the reader is told “You are the Adam or the Eve that enjoy them”.

Jacob is met at I.31, “When Jacob waked out of his dream”, and Moses comes in the parade of sacred history at I.55, where the soul can say “I can see Moses with his rod”. Abraham, who saw Christ’s day and was glad, follows at I.62. David is first named at II.14 as the king who knew that God’s goodness asks for praise all day long, and his Psalms fill a long stretch of the Third Century.

St Peter is the first apostle quoted (I.5), St John, the seer of Revelation, follows at I.54, and St Paul enters at I.61 as a pupil of the Cross, “Great Master to St. Paul, the convert”.

Two more figures belong to the prayers. Mary Magdalen, in the old tradition that made her the woman who anointed Christ’s feet, appears at I.81, and Samson, whose death destroyed his enemies, stands at I.90 as a figure of Christ.

The philosophers and Fathers. Thomas à Kempis, the fifteenth-century author of The Imitation of Christ, is the first writer outside Scripture to be quoted by name, “Give all (saith Thomas à Kempis) for all” (I.7). Seneca, the Roman Stoic, follows at I.15 with a Latin sentence not found in his works, and Plutarch, the Greek moralist, comes at I.17.

Socrates enters at I.40 as the philosopher who rejoiced to need so little, and St Anselm, the eleventh-century archbishop of Canterbury, at I.91 as one who would rather suffer hell than sin. Plato is first named with Cato at II.84, “As both Plato and Cato with the Apostle, term Him”, where Cato stands for the supposed author of a Latin schoolbook of moral verses.