Centuries of Meditations

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.