Intuition

Use in the book

The colorless, formless presence can be intuited without being seen in its appearance; the pronouns leave its identity unnamed. In the Locke passage, Joubert explicitly glosses knowledge as intuition and compares the judgment that supplies its lack to a blind person’s stick. The comparison gives judgment a practical use while distinguishing it from immediate apprehension. The Malebranche note likewise assigns self-evidence to intuition and perception of premises, not to a conclusion. Finally a stylistic preference for and over but becomes a contrast between divine seeing and human judging. Here intuition enters an argument about narration and reflection; the sentence does not establish a general doctrine that people never apprehend directly.

Places to read

1. I, p. 149, entry 2, ¶1Presence can be intuited without sight of an appearance.
2. I, p. 312, entry 1, ¶1Joubert glosses quoted knowledge as intuition.
3. II, p. 776, entry 1, ¶1Immediate premises are distinguished from inference.
4. II, p. 879, entry 3, ¶2A conjunction comparison gives intuition to the gods who see.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains intuition in each case. The parenthetic gloss of Locke is Joubert’s intervention and must remain separate from the quoted words. At I.149, he/him preserves a possible personal referent without naming God; it would also be grammatically possible to read an impersonal it. The gods in the last passage are plural.

Use in the book

III.2 gives intuition a precise place in the story of childhood, corruption, and recovery. The child encounters a world whose beauty, preciousness, and apparent belonging are immediately manifest. He does not first assemble an argument for its value. In retrospect the narrator calls that knowledge divine and says that, after his apostasy, he gathered it again by the highest reason. Intuition and reason thus belong to different moments of access to the same central goods. The sentence honours reason’s restorative labour rather than dismissing it.

What the child knows must nevertheless be read alongside what he does not know. The meditation expressly lists ignorance of sin, complaint, poverty, sickness, and death. This absence allows the world to appear at rest in an Edenic peace. It is not a claim that the child possesses encyclopedic knowledge. The following meditation supplies further examples: corn seems never to have been sown and people seem not to be subject to death. Such remembered impressions belong to the visionary account of innocence; they are not empirical propositions the adult reader is required to defend.

The intuition at stake is therefore best understood through the whole account of apprehended value. The world addresses a receptive soul as glorious, joyful, and intimately its own. Adult recovery need not reproduce every childhood misunderstanding in order to recover that esteem. Reason can recognize real worth in common things after experience has disclosed mortality, division, and conflict.

III.1 also locates the remembered light in the speaker’s birth and entrance into this world. The supplied editorial notes distinguish that language from a doctrine of prenatal recollection. Nothing in the immediate contrast between intuition and reason requires a previous life. Its practical force is nearer at hand: learned habits can obscure a gift of perception, yet disciplined understanding can help renew an awareness that once came without discursive effort.

Places to read

1. III.1Introduces remembered apprehensions given at birth and offers experience as the means of teaching them.
2. III.2Explicitly contrasts intuitive knowing with later recovery by the highest reason.
3. III.3Shows both the vivid perception of value and the child’s ignorance of temporal change.

In this edition

The 2026 notes explain the contrast between immediate and discursive knowledge and caution against reading pre-existence into the birth imagery. Intuition is Traherne’s own word; the distinction between enduring insight and childhood factual impressions is an interpretive aid.

Use in the book

Visual words explain the unity and immediacy of divine knowing. God does not search, enumerate, or move from an important object to a lesser one; he possesses knowledge and sees all in one gaze. Ficino compares this to an eye seeing many stars at once, while recognizing that a sensory comparison does not reproduce God's mode of cognition. The disputed word comprehendere is particularly important. An objection says that whatever is comprehended must be bounded and therefore finite. Ficino answers that the infinite would indeed not be encompassed by another, but may comprehend itself: divine self-knowledge is wholly commensurate with divine infinity and does not reduce it. The many are known through one form in one act. When he says infinite multitude is seen “as finite,” he immediately explains this as simplicity in essence with multiplicity in a certain rational respect. The formulation describes the mode of divine knowledge, rather than any failure to recognize the extent of what is known.

Further passage references. II.9.20–2223; II.10.8–122345.

Places to read

1. II.9.20God possesses rather than seeks and is not distracted by multiple objects
2. II.9.21One gaze at many stars illustrates simultaneous cognition
3. II.10.8The objection associates being comprehended with being bounded
4. II.10.9Self-comprehension is distinguished from an infinite thing’s enclosure by another
5. II.10.10A single form and act encompass what is not counted successively

Translation in this edition

“Comprehended” should retain the objection’s possible bounding sense until Ficino distinguishes being encompassed by another from infinite self-comprehension. “As finite” in II.10.10 comes with an immediate gloss about simplicity in essence, not a denial of the known plurality’s infinity.

adaequare / sibimet

adaequare / sibimet. Printed forms: adaequari; sibimet.

To be wholly commensurate with oneself. Infinite self-knowledge does not impose another’s limit, but is the infinite reality’s complete self-presence. References: II.10.10. See Intuition and comprehension.

contueri / intueri / intuitus

contueri / intueri / intuitus. Printed forms: contueatur; intuitu; Intuitum.

Contemplate / direct apprehension or gaze. Divine Ideas are held in one gaze, while the natural-order argument calls divine counsel an intuition rather than sequential inquiry. References: II.11.18, II.13.18. See Intuition and comprehension.

distincte / clare / plane

distincte / clare / plane. Printed forms: clare; clarissime; distinctam; distinctas; distincte; plane; planissime.

Distinctly, clearly, or plainly, marking determinate knowledge. Unified divine knowing is repeatedly said to preserve particular distinctions rather than blur them into a vague whole. References: II.9.14, II.9.15, II.10.3. See Intuition and comprehension.

percipio / perceptio

percipio / perceptio. Printed forms: perceptio; percipiat; percipiendam.

To apprehend or receive cognitively. The purified soul receives divine light; the whole apprehension of things rests on the Proem’s two main benefits; mind is constituted to perceive truth. References: Proem.2, Proem.6, I.6.10. See Intuition and comprehension.

perspicacia / perspectio

perspicacia / perspectio. Printed forms: perspectio; perspicacia.

Penetrating insight or vision. Divine truth is not deprived of the excellence of mind, but its insight and truth are not two components; the expressions formulate simple self-manifestation. References: I.6.12. See Intuition and comprehension.

prospectus / intuitus

prospectus / intuitus. Printed forms: intuitu; prospectu.

A view and an intuitive apprehension. Seeing all colours in one view parallels grasping all truths in one intuition; the shared simultaneity contrasts with successive search. References: I.6.8, I.6.9. See Intuition and comprehension.

scientia / comprehendere

scientia / comprehendere. Printed forms: comprehendantur; Comprehendi; comprehendi; comprehendit; comprehenduntur; scientia.

Knowledge; to grasp or comprehend, with a disputed sense of bounding. An infinite regress would block causal knowledge; divine self-comprehension is distinguished from limitation by another. References: II.3.9, II.9.15, II.10.8, II.10.9. See Intuition and comprehension.

Use in the book

Intuition in these passages means an immediate intellectual seeing; discourse is movement through a succession of acts or considerations. It does not mean conversation. When Ficino calls the world's ordering principle “counsel,” he expressly says that the word is metaphorical: one thing is made for the sake of another, but the divine craftsman is not uncertainly investigating one thing by means of another. Perfect skill supplies the analogy of action without hesitant deliberation.

Rational soul has the different mode of understanding by discourse. The painter Apelles attends to one plant and then another, although the meadow presents itself all at once. Likewise, soul's temporal activity progressively receives and works through what comes from an undivided higher source. This difference helps explain how an immutable cause can be associated with changing effects without itself passing through the recipient's sequence. Neither “intuition” nor “discourse” should be imported directly from modern popular usage: the first is not mere hunch, and the second is not principally speech. The contrast concerns simultaneity and succession in cognition and action.

The wider word family also describes temporal succession without requiring inferential reasoning. At III.2.21, discursio is explicitly opposed to spatial division: soul's activity is divided by a course through time, although its substance is not divided by bodily dimension. This operational use must be distinguished from the more specific account of reasoning from one consideration to another.

Further passage references. II.11.18; II.13.17–1923; III.1.28–31234; III.2.23, 28–30; III.2.21.

Places to read

1. II.6.22Mind ranges through immensity in its operation within the attributed presence theory
2. II.9.20Divine possession of knowledge differs from searching or diverting attention
3. III.2.23Soul is characterized as understanding through time
4. IV.2.11The account distinguishes motion through time from completion in a moment

Translation in this edition

At IV.2.11 action passing through intermediaries is called motion; temporal passage and momentary completion distinguish temporal from eternal motion. This broad operational sense should not be confused with every narrower instance of discursive reasoning. The retained prior treatment explains the painter analogy separately.

discurrere / cursus

discurrere / cursus. Printed forms: discurrere; discurrit.

To range or run through a course, in thought, activity, or time. The mind’s ranging activity helps the reported presence argument; the word need not signify spoken discourse. References: II.4.7, II.6.17, II.6.22. See Intuition and discourse.

discursio

discursio. Printed forms: discursio.

A line or course of reasoning. Ficino labels the argument from angelic multiplicity to divine simplicity his first route of proof above the angel; it is not a movement of God’s own thought. References: I.6.6. See Intuition and discourse.

discursus / discurrere

discursus / discurrere. Printed forms: discurrendo; discurrens; discursum.

A running through / proceed successively. Temporal discourse characterizes soul’s knowing, unlike the simultaneous intuition attributed to higher intelligence. References: III.1.28, III.2.29, III.2.30. See Intuition and discourse.