From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordPhocion was an Athenian general and statesman, dated approximately 402–318 BC in the supplied edition, and remembered for honest poverty.
- In TraherneThe example completes a two-stage argument.
- In this editionThe 2026 note identifies Plutarch’s Phocion 30, where a sober son has sufficient inheritance and an undisciplined one can never have enough.
- A place to beginQuestions acquisition justified solely by a future intention to give.
Meaning
Phocion was an Athenian general and statesman, dated approximately 402–318 BC in the supplied edition, and remembered for honest poverty. Traherne invokes his refusal of riches for his children as an example of freedom from covetousness, extending the lesson to friends.
Use in the book
The example completes a two-stage argument. In IV.33 the exemplary man has already ceased desiring wealth for himself: further possessions would help him only through being given away. Yet the desire to enrich others can conceal a remaining acquisitive impulse. He comes to see that refusing anxious accumulation may sometimes please God as much as acquiring property and then distributing it in particular charities. The qualification sometimes matters; charitable giving is not simply condemned.
IV.34 supplies Phocion’s sharp alternative. Children who share his character will not need riches; if they lack that character, riches will become needless and harmful superfluities. The argument concerns their capacity to use wealth well, not indifference to their welfare. Transferred to friends, it separates love of another person from an automatic wish to increase that person’s possessions.
Luther supplies a subsidiary example in the same meditation. The exemplary man can now claim, with him, that covetousness has no hold upon him. Traherne joins the two names around this freedom, without identifying their religious positions or circumstances as equivalent.
Places to read
In this edition
The 2026 note identifies Plutarch’s Phocion 30, where a sober son has sufficient inheritance and an undisciplined one can never have enough. Traherne sharpens the alternative. The same note says that Luther’s remark has not been traced to a source.
Source note
Primary text: IV.33, IV.34. Supplied 2026 editorial note 289 identifies Phocion, gives the Plutarch parallel, and records the untraced Luther attribution; note 288 explains the preceding wholesale–retail image.