Need

Use in the book

The verb commonly takes a genitive naming what is needed. At 215a οὐδενὸς δεόμενος, “needing nothing,” is inferred from the good person’s supposed sufficiency. At 217a the healthy body needs neither medicine nor benefit, and at 220c–d2 absence of harm is imagined to remove the need for benefit. These constructions express the dependence on help that the argument links with affection.

The same verb has ordinary conversational and educational uses: Socrates does not need to hear Hippothales’ metre (205a–b); needing a teacher exposes Lysis’ incomplete understanding (210d); Socrates finally needs to review the discussion (222e).

Distinguish this personal construction, someone needing something, from impersonal δεῖ, “it is necessary.” Need can supply a reason for seeking another person or a good, but the verb alone does not establish that every friendship is merely instrumental.

Places to read

1. 215aὉ δέ γε ἱκανὸς οὐδενὸς δεόμενος — And the sufficient person is in need of nothing.
2. 205a–b
3. 210d
4. 215a–b2
5. 217a
6. 220c–d2
7. 222e

Use in the book

Children need models more than criticisms, directing education toward example. The priority of “what is this?” over “what good is it?” then makes knowing an essential need and acquiring ideas a great ambition. The fragment about Las Cazes names a perpetual need to honor himself in his own eyes. That last need is not certified as a necessity everyone should satisfy; the recurrence can itself be a diagnostic description.

Places to read

1. I, p. 232, entry 5, ¶1Children require examples more than criticism.
2. I, p. 405, entry 5, ¶1Knowing is placed before practical usefulness.
3. II, p. 911, entry 4, ¶1Self-honoring can become a perpetual need.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains the comparative “more” in the childhood maxim and the ordinal first/second distinction in the questions. It leaves the final portrait a nominal fragment and keeps the printed name without adding a biographical identity.

Use in the book

The governing paradox is that want can itself be treasure. Without any need, a supply would mean nothing to its recipient; its goodness becomes manifest through the difference it makes. This does not make every deprivation good or instruct a person to seek pain. It explains why the capacity to need, desire, and appreciate belongs within the possibility of enjoyment. A creature entirely closed to benefits could neither receive a gift nor become grateful for it.

Traherne extends the claim to God with exceptional boldness. God wants worlds, companions, and the communication of divine goodness, yet is never deprived of them: the wants are eternally satisfied. The argument depends on holding desire and fulfillment together. These are “perfective needs,” not an affliction that creatures unexpectedly repair. Divine plenitude includes the living desire for the good enjoyed, so possession never becomes satiety or dead indifference.

The reader is asked to learn an analogous awareness. A benefit already possessed should be felt as necessary and precious as it would be if removed. Imagining the absence of sun, sea, existence, or companionship makes this exercise concrete. The point is to know a gift’s value while having it, rather than waking to its worth only after loss. Remembered or contemplated want gives continuing freshness to gratitude.

Want also binds persons. To receive what one needs establishes obligation toward a benefactor and opens the possibility of delighting in that benefactor’s goodness. Traherne calls these needs the bonds between God and the soul. The dependency is not merely humiliating; it is an avenue into communion. The desire to give and the capacity to receive fit one another.

Yet the book also distinguishes real wants from the manufactured wants of corrupt custom. Scarce ornaments, status, and exclusive possessions can create a cycle of felt insufficiency in the midst of abundant natural riches. That cycle is not the divine want praised in these meditations. Proper need has an adequate object and can become grateful enjoyment; false valuation endlessly misidentifies what would satisfy. The reader must therefore examine both the intensity of a want and the truth of the good toward which it is directed.

Places to read

1. I.41Want and supply are made jointly necessary to felicity.
2. I.42God’s wants are named perfective and eternally satisfied.
3. I.44Divine wants and enjoyments remain simultaneously present without disturbance.
4. I.45The reader is taught to keep the value-disclosing sense of want present.
5. I.51Needs establish obligation and communion between giver and receiver.

In this edition

“God should want” is intentionally paradoxical. Preserve the qualifications that the needs are always satisfied and never afflict him. The ordinary sense of deprivation alone would reverse the argument.