Treasure

Use in the book

The central question is not how many valuable things one can accumulate, but what truly counts as valuable and how it becomes one’s own. Money and rare ornaments are obvious candidates because society teaches their price. Traherne redirects attention toward necessities, common beauty, the powers of the body and soul, and the persons whose happiness can be shared. A gift’s abundance and availability can increase its worth rather than devalue it through familiarity.

The decisive rule is the divine image. Human beings are made to enjoy God’s treasures after God’s manner. His own perfections and his creatures are therefore the objects of their felicity, and intelligent, generous delight is its form. This joins the inventory of goods to an account of the enjoyer. Correct objects cannot produce happiness if they are ignored, and ardent desire cannot create a true treasure merely by choosing a false one.

Love is indispensable. An object can be present, useful, or conventionally prized without being a treasure in the living sense if the soul takes no pleasure in it. Conversely, another person’s good becomes enriching when love makes it one’s concern. This does not make treasure wholly subjective. God’s works possess excellencies and relations that appreciation is responsible for discovering; the soul’s response should be fitted to them.

Want gives the word a further paradoxical depth. A need allows a supply to be significant, and a remembered need preserves the sweetness of a gift already received. Traherne therefore calls want itself a treasure, especially when considering the divine desire for communication that is eternally satisfied. Human gratitude similarly depends on sensing what it would mean to lack existence, companionship, or a giver. The point is not to multiply misery for its own sake, but to recover the felt value of goods dulled by possession.

Finally, treasures are not self-executing. The soul must think, taste, see, and act. Its own free operation then becomes treasure to God, answering divine generosity with a creaturely gift. The vocabulary moves from receipt through understanding to return. In this complete circuit, to call something a treasure is also to name a task: learn its place, discover its benefit, love it rightly, and let its enjoyment enlarge rather than imprison the self.

Places to read

1. I.41Want becomes a condition and even a treasure of felicitous enjoyment.
2. II.65Objects become living treasures through love and delight.
3. III.58The divine image identifies God’s treasures as human treasures.
4. III.59Felicity requires enjoying those treasures after God’s manner.
5. IV.95The soul’s active exercise is necessary and itself becomes treasure to God.

In this edition

Treasure is broader than accumulated valuables, but should not be treated as a vague compliment. Ask what the passage identifies as precious, to whom, and through what relation or act of enjoyment.