From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordBlindness is the absence of sight.
- In TraherneThe world may be a mirror of infinite beauty while remaining unseen by those who inhabit it.
- In this editionDo not transfer the moral blame attached to figurative blindness into II.81's account of physical sensory deprivation.
- A place to beginMoral blindness leaves the world’s beauty and worth unrecognized.
Meaning
Blindness is the absence of sight. Traherne uses it literally in hypotheses about perception and figuratively for failure to understand the value of what is present.
Use in the book
The world may be a mirror of infinite beauty while remaining unseen by those who inhabit it. This blindness is a failure of esteem, made worse by ingratitude and custom. Philosophers too can be blind when they deny the objects of felicity without showing what is genuinely to be enjoyed. The remedy is positive disclosure, not merely another prohibition. Physical blindness has a different role in II.81: an imagined person born without sight or hearing is still credited with an inward apprehension of infinity. Sensory limitation therefore does not stand for spiritual incapacity in every passage. The contrast clarifies the book's governing claim that bodily looking and intellectual seeing are related powers rather than identical acts.
Places to read
In this edition
Do not transfer the moral blame attached to figurative blindness into II.81's account of physical sensory deprivation. That passage argues for an inward power independently of bodily sight.
Source note
Primary text: I.31, II.81, II.100. The places distinguish two uses of blindness rather than treating disability as a spiritual defect.