From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordTrade can mean a craft or occupation as well as buying and selling.
- In TraherneThe early critique associates trades with ambitions and invented riches learned after the loss of innocence.
- In this editionTrades in III.36 and IV.24 should not be reduced to commerce alone.
- A place to beginTrades appear among the acquired preoccupations from which innocent perception must be freed.
Meaning
Trade can mean a craft or occupation as well as buying and selling. The plural often gathers the ordinary arts by which a social world is furnished.
Use in the book
The early critique associates trades with ambitions and invented riches learned after the loss of innocence. In that setting work belongs to a false system of valuation that keeps people from their common inheritance. Elsewhere expertise in trades exposes how readily people labour for ends less important than happiness.
The later account qualifies any simple hostility to productive work. Under universal charity, occupations would remain as innocent recreations and pleasant ornaments, supplying cities, palaces, and temples. Traherne’s target is consequently not every making or exchange, but the passions and exclusive ends that govern them. The same human arts can help adorn shared life when freed from rapacity and rivalry.
Places to read
- III.5Trades appear among the acquired preoccupations from which innocent perception must be freed.
- III.36Arts, trades, and mechanisms can be understood as pertaining to felicity.
- IV.7Labour spent learning trades rebukes neglect of wisdom.
- IV.24Charity would transform occupations into innocent recreations.
In this edition
Trades in III.36 and IV.24 should not be reduced to commerce alone. The surrounding arts, mechanisms, and buildings give the word its broader occupational sense.
Source note
Primary text: III.5, III.36, IV.7, IV.24. No 2026 editorial notes used.