Goodness

Use in the book

In the report of Platonic faculties, moral goodness consists in their right ordering. The refined-pride passage then distinguishes esteeming good conduct, which can remain esteem for a rule, from esteeming goodness as the person’s own merit. The difficult concession about “eternal” punishment makes goodness the possible medicinal result for a guilty soul. That conditional theological reasoning should not become an unqualified account of punishment or a claim that the notebooks deny moral cultivation.

Places to read

1. I, p. 35–36, entry 1, ¶2Moral goodness is described through an ordering of faculties.
2. II, p. 509, entry 9, ¶1Goodness asks esteem for a person rather than a rule alone.
3. II, p. 860, entry 2, ¶1A conditional account of punishment imagines giving a soul goodness.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves goodness against good conduct, retains the hypothetical “could not give oneself,” and keeps the medicine image in the soul’s treatment. The unnamed opponents and abbreviated Bayle reference remain unspecified.

Moral merit

French: mérite.

Merit in the refined-pride passage belongs to a person whose goodness is difficult to esteem precisely because the observer could not confer the same merit on themselves.

Places to read: II, p. 509, entry 9, ¶1.

Use in the book

To know God is to know goodness. Power feared in isolation gives a distorted religious idea, whereas wisdom and power understood as servants of generous love produce delight. Goodness therefore governs the reading of the other attributes. It explains why they matter to the creature and why their exercise is a reason for gratitude. The world is not merely evidence that a powerful maker exists; it is evidence of the kind of relation that maker intends.

This conviction also guides inquiry. If goodness is infinite, the best gifts should be widely available rather than reserved for the fortunate few. The narrator consequently examines air, light, water, earth, and persons, testing their value through service and imagined absence. His trust is not a refusal to compare evidence; it gives comparison an initial direction. Commonness, usually a reason for contempt, becomes a possible sign of liberality.

Goodness must nevertheless be understood through fitting relations, not through the largest imaginable quantity. An infinite material sun would consume the room needed by other beings; the bounded sun is better because it serves a complete order. Thus limits in a creature may display wisdom rather than failure. The useful relation between parts matters more than the indefinite enlargement of one part alone.

The recipient’s response carries the argument beyond benefit received. Gratitude can make the lover delight in divine goodness as belonging to God, not only as advantageous to himself. One comes to rejoice in the giver’s own blessedness. The later distinction between intention and successful delivery further protects this recognition: a benefactor’s sincere goodness is not measured solely by an outcome that corruption or refusal may obstruct. Traherne does not thereby call every experienced event pleasant. He seeks an account of good intention, free response, and grateful love able to survive the interruption of a particular benefit.

Places to read

1. I.17Knowledge of God is centred on goodness rather than isolated fear of power.
2. III.53Trust in goodness guides inquiry into the worth of common things.
3. II.11A finite sun is better than an all-consuming infinite flame.
4. IV.49Gratitude makes divine attributes delightful as God’s own, beyond their benefit to the self.
5. IV.88The good intention of a benefactor can oblige even when the intended benefit is obstructed.

In this edition

Goodness does not mean indiscriminate approval. The same book distinguishes love of a person from reconciliation to sin. Nor does “infinite goodness” require each material object to be spatially infinite; fitting finite relations can manifest the attribute.