From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordA gift is something bestowed by a giver upon a recipient.
- In TraherneThe opening account of love distinguishes great gifts from great benefits.
- In this edition“Gift” should not be narrowed to a transferable possession.
- A place to beginLove intends useful benefits as well as the magnitude of a gift.
Meaning
A gift is something bestowed by a giver upon a recipient. Traherne extends the category beyond movable objects to the world, bodily and intellectual powers, other persons, liberty, and the giver’s own self. The relation carried by the gift is as important as its external magnitude.
Use in the book
The opening account of love distinguishes great gifts from great benefits. Giving a world would not satisfy love if the recipient could make no worthy use of it. The book’s promised gift is therefore also an education in receiving: what is given must become intelligible and enjoyable. This is why an object’s abundance does not alone guarantee its success as a present. The receiver needs powers, light, and a fitting response.
Creation is given before it can be earned. The world is the beginning of gifts, conferred upon every infant by birth, and bodily capacities arrive before conscious gratitude. That priority explains both the generosity and its concealment. Eyes, ears, limbs, and speech are so near and familiar that their preciousness disappears. The recipient falsely treats what came freely as though it had little worth. Prayer and reflection recover the gift-character of what was already possessed.
A gift also joins the recipient to the giver’s intention. It is a token of love and an occasion for return, but the return need not duplicate its material form. One answers divine giving by esteem, thanksgiving, obedience, and a life able to give pleasure. The person becomes the greatest gift that love can offer to God. Knowledge is therefore a kind of preparation for self-offering: to appear richly before God is to become more lucid, spacious, and attentive to the things he has made.
Liberty brings this reciprocity to its most demanding point. The gift of freedom makes fidelity possible, but also places the power of sin in creaturely hands. Traherne treats this risk as a mark of the dignity God intends for the recipient. A compelled return would not be the friendship sought. The complete movement of gift is consequently not possession followed by automatic repayment, but free bounty received by an answering freedom. The ethical work of the meditations lies largely in making that answer increasingly truthful and ample.
Places to read
- I.6Love intends useful benefits as well as the magnitude of a gift.
- II.2The world is the first gift bestowed on every infant by birth.
- I.66The bodily faculties are overlooked because bounty has freely anticipated recognition.
- II.86The person, adorned with knowledge and light, is the greatest gift offered to God.
- IV.52Freedom entrusts the possibility of sin so that the recipient may act as a faithful friend.
In this edition
“Gift” should not be narrowed to a transferable possession. Some gifts are powers or relations, and the world’s being given does not entail its removal from anyone else. The freedom of the gift concerns its gratuity; the freedom of the recipient concerns the manner of answering it.