“The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold; the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap and almost mad with ecstasy; they were such strange and wonderful things. The Men! O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die; but all things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the light of the day, and something infinite behind everything appeared, which tallied with my expectation and moved my desire....”
Yet was this light eclipsed. He was “with much ado” perverted by the world, by the temptation of men and worldly things and by “opinion and custom,” not any “inward corruption or depravation of Nature.”
For he tells us how he once entered a noble dining-room and was there alone “to see the gold and state and carved imagery,” but wearied of it because it was dead, and had no motion. A little afterwards he saw it “full of lords and ladies and music and dancing,” and now pleasure took the place of tediousness, and he perceived, long after, that “men and women are, when well understood, a principal part of our true felicity.” Once again, “in a lowering and sad evening, being alone in the field, when all things were dead quiet,” he had the same weariness, nay, even horror. “I was a weak and little child, and had forgotten there was a man alive in the earth.” Nevertheless, hope and expectation came to him and comforted him, and taught him “that he was concerned in all the world.” That he was “concerned in all the world” was the great source of comfort and joy which he found in life, and of that joy which his book pours out for us. Not only did he see that he was concerned in all the world, but that river and corn and herb and sand were so concerned. God, he says, “knoweth infinite excellencies” in each of these things; “He seeth how it relateth to angels and men.” In this he anticipated Blake’s Auguries of Innocence. He seems to see the patterns which all living things are for ever weaving. He would have men strive after this divine knowledge of things and of their place in the universe.
He came to believe that “all other creatures were such that God was Himself in their creation, that is, Almighty Power wholly exerted; and that every creature is indeed as it seemed in my infancy, not as it is commonly apprehended.”
Yet he feels the superiority of man’s soul to the things which it apprehends: “One soul in the immensity of its intelligence is greater and more excellent than the whole world.” Even so Richard Jefferies prayed that his soul “might be more than the cosmos of life.” The soul is greater than the whole world because it is capable of apprehending the whole world, because it is spiritual, and the spiritual nature is infinite. Thus Traherne was led to the splendid error of making the sun “a poor little dead thing.” Or perhaps it was a figure of speech used to convince the multitude of his estimation of man’s soul as above all visible things. In the same spirit he speaks of “this little Cottage of Heaven and Earth as too small a gift, though fair,” for beings of whom he says: “Infinity we know and feel by our souls; and feel it so naturally as if it were the very essence and being of the soul”; and again, with childlike simplicity and majesty—
“Man is a creature of such noble principles and severe expectations, that could he perceive the least defect to be in the Deity, it would infinitely displease him.”
He could not well have thought of man except loftily, since he was himself one whom imagination never deserted—imagination the greatest power of the mind by which not poets only live and have their being—
“For God,” says he, “hath made you able to create worlds in your own mind which are more precious unto Him than those which He created; and to give and offer up the world unto Him, which is very delightful in flowing from Him, but made more in returning to Him.”
That power to create worlds in the mind is the imagination, and is the proof that the creature liveth and is divine. “Things unknown,” he says, “have a secret influence on the soul,” and “we love we know not what.” The spirit can fill the whole world and the stars be your jewels: “You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars, and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world.” And our inheritance is more than the world, “because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.” It is a social mysticism. “The world,” he says in another place, “does serve you, not only as it is the place and receptacle of all your joys, but as it is a great obligation laid upon all mankind, and upon every person in all ages, to love you as himself; as it also magnifieth all your companions.” His is the true “public mind,” as he calls it. “There is not,” he says in another place—“there is not a man in the whole world that knows God, or himself, but he must honour you. Not only as an Angel or as a Cherubim, but as one redeemed by the blood of Christ, beloved by all Angels, Cherubims, and Men, the heir of the world, and as much greater than the Universe, as he that possesseth the house is greater than the house. O what a holy and blessed life would men lead, what joys and treasures would they be to each other, in what a sphere of excellency would every man move, how sublime and glorious would their estate be, how full of peace and quiet would the world be, yea, of joy and honour, order and beauty, did men perceive this of themselves, and had they this esteem for one another!”
Here, as in other passages, he seems to advance to the position of Whitman, whom some have blamed for making the word “divine” of no value because he would apply it to all, whereas to do so is no more than to lay down that rule of veneration for men—and the other animals—which has produced and will produce the greatest revolutions.