Thomas Traherne and the Felicities of the Mind By James Balakier

Chapter 1:

Thomas Traherne, Hobbism, and the Seventeenth-Century Sciences: “Handmaids” to Felicity

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Summum Bonum, (greatest Good,) as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers.… Felicity is a continuall progresse of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the later. The cause whereof is, That the object of Mans desire, is not to enjoy once onely, and for one instant of time; but to assure forever, the way of his future desire. And therefore the voluntary actions, and inclinations of all men, tend, not onely to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life; and differ onely in the way: which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions, in divers men; and partly from the difference of the knowledge, or opinion each one has of the causes, which produce the effect desired. (Leviathan 70)

The mind is never satisfied, but is continually desiring and deriving more happiness as it moves “from one object to another” along a time continuum. As such, there is no such thing as a highest good in human existence. The whole idea of a stable, unchanging Felicity is preposterous to Hobbes. The practice which is “common to all men,” as he states in chapter 8 of Leviathan, is simply the placing of their Felicity “in the acquisition of the grosse pleasures of the Senses, and the things that immediately conduce thereto” (Leviathan 57).

While Hobbes’ definition of Felicity is anchored in the appetites and aversions of sensory experience, Traherne states in The Kingdom of God that where the mind “is clear and disentangled from the Interests and Intregues of Flesh and Blood, Its Natural bent and its first Motions Incline it to the best of things” (Works 1: 270). This proclivity has the force of a universal law for Traherne, as he affirms in a poem appearing in chapter 38 of The Kingdom of God:

There is one Law in Heaven and Earth abov,
That by one Inclination all should be
Led and attracted to felicitie. (“Who made it first? Whence did
this Lovly Thing”¹² 1: 472)

In the Centuries, he enlarges upon this law by writing that