Chapter X

Thoughts are the most present things to thoughts, and of the most
powerful influence. My Soul was only apt and disposed to great
things; but souls to souls are like apples, one being rotten rots
another. When I began to speak and go, nothing began to be present
to me but what was present to me in their thoughts. Nor was anything
present to me any other way than it was so to them. The glass of
imagination was the only mirror wherein anything was represented or
appeared to me. All things were absent which they talked not of. So
I began among my playfellow's to prize a drum, a fine coat, a penny,
a gilded book, &c., who before never dreamed of any such wealth.
Goodly objects to drown all the knowledge of Heaven and Earth! As
for the Heavens and Sun and Stars, they disappeared, and were no
more unto me than the bare walls. So that the strange riches of
man's invention quite overcame the riches of nature, being learned
more laboriously and in the second place.

By this, Traherne proceeds, parents and nurses should learn the right way of teaching children. Nothing is easier than to teach the truth because the nature of the thing confirms the teaching; whereas to teach children to value "gugaus," baubles, and rattles puts false ideas into their heads, and blots out all noble and divine thoughts, rendering them uncertain about everything, and dividing them from God. "Verily," he says, "there is no savage nation under the cope of Heaven that is more absurdly barbarous than the Christian World.... I am sure that those barbarous people that go naked come nearer to Adam, God, and Angels in the simplicity of their wealth, though not in knowledge."

XIV

Being swallowed up therefore in the miserable gulf of idle talk
and worthless vanities, thenceforth I lived among shadows, like a
prodigal son feeding upon husks with swine. A comfortless wilderness
full of thorns and troubles the world was or worse: a waste place
covered with idleness and play, and shops, and markets, and taverns.
As for churches they were things I did not understand, and schools
were a burden: so that there was nothing in the world worth the
having or enjoying but my game and sport, which also was a dream,
and being passed wholly forgotten. So that I had wholly forgotten
all goodness, bounty, comfort, and glory; which things are the very
brightness of the Glory of God, for lack of which therefore He was
unknown.