Book

Use in the book

Fine books are described as places in which the mind can put many things, after the caution that one finds largely what one brings. This is a description of receptive space, not a denial that books contain determinate words. Judging a book also requires distance and perspective rather than immersion alone. The comparison between predecessors and contemporaries asks whether a book helps or harms, perfects or corrupts minds, then contrasts those questions with whether it pleases. Joubert’s criticism is directed at a narrowing of evaluation; it does not logically entail that all pleasure is corruption.

Places to read

1. I, p. 287, entry 9, ¶1The book offers a place for the reader’s mind.
2. II, p. 648, entry 1, ¶1Critical distance is required even for a book or discourse.
3. II, p. 767, entry 1, ¶4Pleasure is contrasted with earlier questions of benefit and harm.

Translation in this edition

The English translation distinguishes book and work as context requires. The [harm] in the final comparison is a printed source-editor supplement, not a newly inferred reproduction loss. The rhetorical contrast does not constitute an external history of reading habits.

Use in the book

The empty book is like an infant soul: capable of receiving all things, but not yet filled. Because it was given in love, the writer will return it filled with enriching truths. Form and purpose coincide: communication makes the recipient capable of enjoying what the book describes. Yet books have limits. The remembered apprehensions of infancy are said to be unattainable by book, so Traherne teaches them through narrated experience. That is an admission that verbal information must awaken a way of seeing, not a declaration that his own writing is useless.

The desire for a book from heaven eventually discovers Scripture as a gift already prepared before the speaker's birth. The difficulty then becomes recognizing its means of transmission and interpreting its contents. Books can also be false treasures: a gilded book prized by a child for appearance joins the objects that crowd out heaven and earth. The question is what kind of attention reading or ownership establishes.

Places to read

1. I.1The received blank book becomes the figure and instrument of an enriching exchange.
2. III.1Infant apprehensions are not simply obtainable from books but must be taught through experience.
3. III.10A gilded book becomes one of the conventional objects that eclipse larger treasures.
4. III.27The longed-for book from heaven proves to have been prepared before the reader’s birth.
5. III.32The excellence of Scripture’s matter is distinguished from doubts about its authentication.

In this edition

“Book” may identify the notebook being written, Scripture, learned books, or a decorative possession. An interpretation must first determine which object the local sentence names.