Heavenly perspectives, mirrors of eternity: Thomas Traherne's yearning subject - Critical Essay

In significant ways, Traherne's mirror trope remains congruous with early Christian definitions. For example, Traherne defines the reflections in the mirroring soul very strictly: they are "Ideas from the Skie." God is in the sky, and ideas emanate from him. This patristic formulation had its beginnings in classical philosophy. Plato argues that ideas represent objective standards, outlining what is real more accurately than does the physical world. Drawing upon Platonic thought, Augustine argues that ideas are actually God's objective pattern and as such exist in God's mind. These ideas appear in the mirror of the soul. (35) In the first stanza of "The Circulation," Traherne both articulates the attributes of the soul as a mirror, and sets out the identity of the reflections in that mirroring soul:

   As fair Ideas from the Skie,
   Or Images of Things,
   Unto a Spotless Mirror flie,
   On unperceived Wings;
   And lodging there affect the Sence,
   As if at first they came from thence;
   While being there, they richly Beautifie
   The Place they fill, and yet communicat
   Themselves, reflecting to the Seers Ey,
   Just such is our Estate.
   No Prais can we return again,
   No Glory in our selves possess,
   But what derived from without we gain,
   From all the Mysteries of Blessedness.

("The Circulation," lines 1-14)

The first two lines balance "fair Ideas" and "Images of Things" on either side of the equation; both "Ideas" and "Images of Things" may "Unto a Spotless Mirror flie." Further, both, when they "lodge" in the mirror, "affect the Sence." "Images of Things," it seems, would naturally affect the sense of sight, but it is less clear what "Sence" the "Ideas" affect, unless we take into account the history of the soul represented as a mirror, with ideas as objects reflected in the soul. The "Sence" that "Ideas" affect is the reflective "Sence" of the soul. (36)

Building upon Neo-platonic conceptions of the soul, Descartes explains this "sence" of the soul in his Opticks: "We know for certain it is the soul which has sensory perceptions, and not the body" (Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology, trans., Paul J. Olscamp [Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965], 164). (39) Descartes bases this conception upon the Platonic notion that ideas are more real than "things": Descartes' "soul" has a substance that is more "real" than the body. Traheme expresses a Neo-platonic view similar to Descartes' formulation, giving the soul substance and sensory perceptions. His analogy of the soul with the physical body offers the soul by association physical (mechanical) attributes:

   [God] Can make the soul by Sense to feel and see,
   And with her Joy the Senses wrap'd to be.
   Yea while the Flesh of Body subject lies
   To those Affections which in Souls arise;
   All holy Glories from the Soul redound,
   And in the Body by the Soul abound,
   Are felt within, and ravish ev'ry Sense,
   With all the Godhead's glorious Excellence:
   Who found the way himself to dwell within,
   As if even Flesh were nigh to him of kin.