From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordComplacency is pleased satisfaction in an object judged good.
- In TraherneIn the analysis of praise, complacency stands between knowledge and thanksgiving.
- In this editionKeep the positive historical sense.
- A place to beginComplacency is one constituent of praise alongside knowledge and thanksgiving.
Meaning
Complacency is pleased satisfaction in an object judged good. The older positive sense differs sharply from the modern implication of smug or uncritical self-satisfaction.
Use in the book
In the analysis of praise, complacency stands between knowledge and thanksgiving. One knows the good, rests with pleasure in it, and returns acknowledgment to its giver. The psalmist's complacency is reached by examining the incomparable excellence of God's works; it is not a refusal to examine them. Traherne consequently insists that readers need a rational knowledge of those works to understand the grounds of David's delight. This satisfaction is stable without being inert. It can express itself in repeated meditation, praise, and love because its object remains inexhaustibly valuable. The term is especially important wherever modern habits of reading would make the very settled joy Traherne commends sound like a moral defect.
Places to read
In this edition
Keep the positive historical sense. “Complaisance,” meaning an accommodating wish to please, is not an attested interchangeable word in these passages and should not be confused with it.
Source note
Primary text: III.82, III.91, III.92. All three explicit uses occur in the discussion of psalmic praise and enjoyment.