From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordCommodity here means advantage, benefit, or profit.
- In TraherneTraherne pairs commodity with desire to explain why angels and human beings are drawn toward the saving spectacle of Christ.
- In this editionThe 2026 note supplies “advantage, profit.”
- A place to beginCommodity and Desire name the inward attractions that draw without visible cords.
Meaning
Commodity here means advantage, benefit, or profit. The word does not chiefly denote a marketable article or raw material, though its economic associations remain suggestive.
Use in the book
Traherne pairs commodity with desire to explain why angels and human beings are drawn toward the saving spectacle of Christ. The language of force is deliberately paradoxical: what compels is a good freely recognized as desirable. The preceding examples range from sickness seeking a physician to stones moving at Amphion’s music. Their shared structure is attraction toward benefit. This gives the devotion a practical intelligibility without reducing it to financial calculation: the profit at issue is entry into the life and joy disclosed by the Cross.
Places to read
- I.57Commodity and Desire name the inward attractions that draw without visible cords.
In this edition
The 2026 note supplies “advantage, profit.” Reading a commercial object into the sentence mistakes the thing desired for the advantageousness that draws desire.
Source note
Primary text: I.57; historical gloss: 2026 edition note to I.57.