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Of the two works of Traherne which Dobell rescued from oblivion, on both of which we shall draw for our exposition, one contains his poems, the other his prose writings. The title of the latter is Centuries of Meditations.
We shall understand what in Traherne's descriptions reminded Dobell of Berkeley, if we take into account the connexion of the soul with the body at the time when, according to Traherne, it still enjoys the untroubled perception of the true, the light-filled, Ideas of things.
Consider, in this respect, the following passage from Traherne's poem The Praeparative, quoted earlier. In describing the state of soul at a time when the physical senses are not yet in operation, Traherne says: 'Then was my Soul my only All to me,
As regards the title 'Centuries of Meditations' we are ignorant of the meaning Traherne may have attached to it, and what he meant by calling the four parts of the book, 'First', 'Second', etc., Century. The book itself represents a manual of devotion for meditative study by the reader.
Later in this chapter we shall discuss Dobell's philosophical misinterpretation of Traherne, to which he fell victim because he maintained his accustomed spectator standpoint in regard to his object of study.
Whereas for Augustine it is because of its small stature and helplessness that the child becomes a symbol for the spiritual smallness and helplessness of man as such, compared with the overwhelming power of the divine King, for Traherne it is the child's nearness to God which is most present to him, and which must be regained by the man who strives for inner perfection.
At the time when the soul has experiences of the kind described by Traherne, it is in a condition in which, as yet, no active contact has been established between itself and the physical matter of the body and thereby with gravity. Hence there is truth in the picture which Traherne thus sketches from actual memory. The same cannot be said of Berkeley's world-picture.
Consequently we find among the descriptions which Traherne gives of the mode of perception peculiar to man when the inner light, brought into this world at birth, is not yet absorbed by the physical eye, many helpful characterizations of the nature of Imaginative perception, some of which may be quoted here.
He must consider Holland of the seventeenth century, and England: the Platonists of Cambridge and Amsterdam; must think of Van Helmont; and of a Vaughan who 'saw eternity the other night'; of a Traherne, who should never enjoy the world aright without some illumination from his star; of a young Milton, penseroso, out watching the Bear in some high lonely tower with thrice-great Hermes, who should unsphere his spirit,
This is the condition of soul of which Traherne says in the same poem that through it a man is still a recipient of the 'true Ideas of all things'. In this condition the object of sight is not the corporeal world which reflects the light, but light itself, engaged in the weaving of the archetypal images.
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