Centuries of Meditations

Name: Centuries of Meditations
Author: Thomas Traherne

Annotated Edition · With an Introduction, Notes and an Outline.

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Centuries of MeditationsThe Second Century · Meditation II.81

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English Edition · Branch 195 of 454

The Second Century · Meditation II.81

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Centuries of Meditations

p. 195

81

Few will believe the soul to be infinite: yet infinite is the first thing which is naturally known. Bounds and limits are discerned only in a secondary manner. Suppose a man were born deaf and blind. By the very feeling of his soul, he apprehends infinite about him, infinite space, infinite darkness. He thinks not of wall and limits till he feels them and is stopped by them. That things are finite therefore we learn by our senses. But infinity we know and feel by our souls: and feel it so naturally, as if it were the very essence and being of the soul. The truth of it is, it is individually in the soul: for God is there, and more near to us than we are to ourselves. So that we cannot feel our souls, but we must feel Him, in that first of properties, infinite space. And this we know so naturally, that it is the only primo et necessario cognitum in rerum naturâ: of all things the only first and most necessarily known. For we can unsuppose Heaven, and Earth and annihilate the world in our imagination, but the place where they stood will remain behind, and we cannot unsuppose or annihilate that, do what we can. Which without us is the chamber of our infinite treasures, and within us the repository and recipient of them.

144.Dobell doubted the word and queried infinity in a footnote. The manuscript reads plainly Infinit, Traherne’s spelling, and he uses the adjective as a noun, as he does a few lines on (“he apprehends infinite about him”), so the text stands as written.

145.Latin, “known first and of necessity in the nature of things”, which Traherne translates. The schoolmen gave this place to being. Aquinas, after Avicenna, says that what the intellect first conceives, as most known, is being (De Veritate q.1 a.1). Traherne gives it to infinite space, close to Descartes, for whom the perception of the infinite is in some way prior in the mind to that of the finite (Meditations III). Compare II.24.

146.To unsuppose is to suppose away, to imagine not to be, a rare word. Henry More argued in the same way that if matter were removed from the world “there will be still Space and distance”, so that space must be something real and not bodily (The Immortality of the Soul, second edition, 1662). Traherne knew More’s work.

About This Reading Edition

Thomas Traherne’s Centuries explore felicity, childhood vision, love, and the soul’s capacity to enjoy the world. This annotated English edition presents all 410 meditations across five Centuries, with an introduction, explanatory notes, an outline, and textual apparatus.

Historical Text

The Centuries survive in Traherne’s manuscript and were first published by Bertram Dobell in London in 1908. The supplied edition follows the corrected Dobell text, with manuscript readings documented in its Note on the Text and Textual Notes. The four complete Centuries contain one hundred meditations each; the unfinished Fifth contains ten.

About This Edition

Diotimos Editions prepared the introduction, explanatory notes, glossary, reading guide, outline, and textual apparatus for this English original. Century and meditation numbers preserve the work’s structure, while verse line breaks, italics, and struck-through manuscript cancellations remain visible. Notes accompany their passages in the reader and Book Mode.

Rights

Thomas Traherne’s historical text and Bertram Dobell’s 1908 printing are in the public domain. The introduction, notes, and apparatus are © 2026 Diotimos Editions. Historical printing and transcription links identify the edition’s copy-text; manuscript corrections and unresolved readings are documented in the supplied editorial apparatus.