Areopagitica

Milton, John (1644). Areopagitica, A Speech of Mr. John

Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing to the
Parliament of England with a Commentary by Sir Richard
C. Jebb and with Supplementary Material.
Thomas Corns Milton’s Prose
In The Cambridge Companion to Milton (1989)
as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book;
who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature,
Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good
Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of
God . .... Many a man lives a burden to the
Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-
blood of a master spirit . . . (YP 2: 492-3)
Milton offers what is really a subtle and
rather remote analogy as if it were an
apparent fact: a book shares important
properties with human life, and
censorship resembles a summary killing.
And, as in the passage from Donne, the
image is controlled, extended, persistent,
and convincing.
All of Milton's earliest vernacular prose, that is,
his five antiprelatical tracts of 1641-2, and some
of his pamphlets of 1643-5, including what is
currently his most popular, Areopagitica (1644),
are characterized by a flamboyant style, rich in
imagery and lexically innovative to the point of
playfulness. In it, metaphors and similes abound,
often in great elaboration.
643 Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing, also known as
the Licensing Order of 1643, in which Parliament required authors to
have a license approved by the government before their work could be
published

The English poet John Milton titled his defence of freedom of the press
"Areopagitica," arguing that the censors of ancient Athens, based at
the Areopagus, had not practiced the kind of prior restraint of
publication being called for in the English Parliament of Milton's time.
It was the task which I began with, to
show that no nation, or well-instituted
state, if they valued books at all, did ever
use this way of licensing; and it might be
answered, that this is a piece of prudence
lately discovered
I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the
Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how
books demean themselves as well as men; and
thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice
on them as malefactors. For books are not absolutely
dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to
be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are;
nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and
extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know
they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those
fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down,
may chance to spring up armed men.
And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as
good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a
man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he
who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the
image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a
burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious
life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured
up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can
restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss;
and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a
rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare
the worse.
We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the
living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man,
preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may
be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the
whole impression, a kind of massacre; whereof the execution ends not
in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth
essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a
life. But lest I should be condemned of introducing license, while I
oppose licensing, I refuse not the pains to be so much historical, as will
serve to show what hath been done by ancient and famous
commonwealths against this disorder, till the very time that this project
of licensing crept out of the Inquisition, was catched up by our prelates,
and hath caught some of our presbyters.
Books are like living essences (fifth essence of rationality)
What sort of books were prohibited among the Greeks
EXAMPLE of Athens In Athens, where books and wits were ever busier than
in any other part of Greece, I find but only two sorts of writings which the
magistrate cared to take notice of; those either blasphemous and atheistical,
or libellous.
What sort of books were prohibited among the Romans
PAPACY and CENSURE: “the pure conceit of an Imprimatur”
After which time the Popes of Rome, engrossing what they pleased of
political rule into their own hands, extended their dominion over men's eyes,
as they had before over their judgments, burning and prohibiting to be read
what they fancied not; yet sparing in their censures, and the books not many
which they so dealt with: till Martin V., by his bull, not only prohibited, but
was the first that excommunicated the reading of heretical books; for about
that time Wickliffe and Huss, growing terrible, were they who first drove the
Papal Court to a stricter policy of prohibiting.  as if St. Peter had
bequeathed them the keys of the press also out of Paradise
INQUISITURIENT BISHOPS
Till then books were ever as freely admitted into the world as any other
birth; the issue of the brain was no more stifled than the issue of the
womb: no envious Juno sat cross-legged over the nativity of any man's
intellectual offspring; but if it proved a monster, who denies, but that it
was justly burnt, or sunk into the sea? But that a book, in worse
condition than a peccant soul, should be to stand before a jury ere it be
born to the world, and undergo yet in darkness the judgment of
Radamanth and his colleagues, ere it can pass the ferry backward into
light, was never heard before, till that mysterious iniquity, provoked
and troubled at the first entrance of Reformation, sought out new
limbos and new hells wherein they might include our books also within
the number of their damned.
And this was the rare morsel so officiously snatched up, and so ill-
favouredly imitated by our inquisiturient bishops, and the attendant
minorites their chaplains. That ye like not now these most certain
authors of this licensing order, and that all sinister intention was far
distant from your thoughts, when ye were importuned the passing it,
all men who know the integrity of your actions, and how ye honour
truth, will clear ye readily.
EUSEBIUSIS’ VISION
READ ANY BOOKS WHATEVER COME TO THY HANDS, FOR
THOU ART SUFFICIENT BOTH TO JUDGE ARIGHT AND TO
EXAMINE EACH MATTER. To this revelation he assented the
sooner, as he confesses, because it was answerable to that of
the Apostle to the Thessalonians, PROVE ALL THINGS, HOLD
FAST THAT WHICH IS GOOD. And he might have added
another remarkable saying of the same author: TO THE PURE,
ALL THINGS ARE PURE; not only meats and drinks, but all kind
of knowledge whether of good or evil; the knowledge cannot
defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience
be not defiled.
For books are as meats and viands are; some
of good, some of evil substance; and yet God,
in that unapocryphal vision, said without
exception, RISE, PETER, KILL AND EAT,
TEMPERANCE
an important virtue but not the result of prescriptions

Solomon informs us, that much reading is a weariness to the flesh; but
neither he nor other inspired author tells us that such or such reading
is unlawful: yet certainly had God thought good to limit us herein, it
had been much more expedient to have told us what was unlawful
than what was wearisome.
He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming
pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that
which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian.
EXCREMENTAL WHITENESS
That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of
evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and
rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an
excremental whiteness
SCOUTING IN THE REGIONS OF SIN and
FALSITY
Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in
this world so necessary to the constituting of human
virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of
truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger,
scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading
all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of
reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of
books promiscuously read.
What are the possible harms of
books?
INFECTION

But on the other side that infection which

is from books of controversy in religion is
more doubtful and dangerous to the
learned than to the ignorant; and yet
those books must be permitted
untouched by the licenser.
Seeing, therefore, that those books, and those in great abundance,
which are likeliest to taint both life and doctrine, cannot be suppressed
without the fall of learning and of all ability in disputation, and that
these books of either sort are most and soonest catching to the
learned, from whom to the common people whatever is heretical or
dissolute may quickly be conveyed, and that evil manners are as
perfectly learnt without books a thousand other ways which cannot be
stopped, and evil doctrine not with books can propagate, except a
teacher guide, which he might also do without writing, and so beyond
prohibiting, I am not able to unfold, how this cautelous enterprise of
licensing can be exempted from the number of vain attempts
TEMPTATION
Tis next alleged we must not expose ourselves to
temptations without necessity, and next to that, not
employ our time in vain things. To both these
objections one answer will serve, out of the grounds
already laid, that to all men such books are not
temptations, nor vanities, but useful drugs and
materials wherewith to temper and compose effective
and strong medicines, which man's life cannot want.
The rest, as children and childish men, who have not
the art to qualify and prepare these working minerals,
well may be exhorted to forbear, but hindered forcibly
they cannot be by all the licensing that Sainted
Inquisition could ever yet contrive. Which is what I
promised to deliver next: that this order of licensing
conduces nothing to the end for which it was framed;
and hath almost prevented me by being clear already
while thus much hath been explaining. See the
ingenuity of Truth, who, when she gets a free and
willing hand, opens herself faster than the pace of
method and discourse can overtake her.
ITALY and SPAIN

If the amendment of manners be aimed at,

look into Italy and Spain, whether those
places be one scruple the better, the
honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the
inquisitional rigour that hath been executed
upon books
Press correctors would be
corrupt too: ignorant,
imperious, and remiss, or
basely pecuniary.
Censure can do no good, or can even do harm:

What advantage is it to be a man, over it

is to be a boy at school, if we have only
escaped the ferula to come under the
fescue of an Imprimatur
hasty view of an unleisured licenser,
perhaps much his younger, perhaps
his inferior in judgment, perhaps one
who never knew the labour of
bookwriting,
PATRIARCHAL LICENSER
and how can a man teach with authority, which is
the life of teaching; how can he be a doctor in his
book as he ought to be, or else had better be
silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but
under the tuition, under the correction of his
patriarchal licenser to blot or alter what precisely
accords not with the hidebound humour which he
calls his judgment?
KNOWLEDGE as COMMODITY
We must not think to make a staple commodity
of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and
licence it like our broadcloth and our woolpacks.
What is it but a servitude like that imposed by the
Philistines, not to be allowed the sharpening of
our own axes and coulters, but we must repair
from all quarters to twenty licensing forges?
JAILERS
whenas debtors and delinquents may walk abroad without a keeper,
but unoffensive books must not stir forth without a visible jailer in their
title.
GALILEO and Milton’s experience in Italy
“the philosophic freedom of England”
There it was that I found and visited the famous
Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for
thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan
and Dominican licensers thought. And though I knew
that England then was groaning loudest under the
prelatical yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of
future happiness, that other nations were so persuaded
of her liberty.
A NEW INQUISITION
This is not, ye Covenants and Protestations that we have made! this is
not to put down prelaty; this is but to chop an episcopacy; this is but to
translate the Palace Metropolitan from one kind of dominion into
another; this is but an old canonical sleight of commuting our penance.

While things are yet not constituted in religion, that freedom of writing
should be restrained by a discipline imitated from the prelates and
learnt by them from the Inquisition, to shut us up all again into the
breast of a licenser, must needs give cause of doubt and
discouragement to all learned and religious men.
Who cannot but discern the fineness of this politic drift, and who are
the contrivers; that while bishops were to be baited down, then all
presses might be open; it was the people's birthright and privilege in
time of Parliament, it was the breaking forth of light. But now, the
bishops abrogated and voided out of the Church, as if our Reformation
sought no more but to make room for others into their seats under
another name, the episcopal arts begin to bud again, the cruse of truth
must run no more oil, liberty of printing must be enthralled again under
a prelatical commission of twenty, the privilege of the people nullified,
and, which is worse, the freedom of learning must groan again, and to
her old fetters: all this the Parliament yet sitting.
A STREAMING FOUNTAIN
Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and
knowledge thrives by exercise, as well as our limbs and
complexion. Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming
fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression,
they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A
man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things
only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so
determines, without knowing other reason, though his
belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his
heresy
OSIRIS and TRUTH
IMAGE of a TRUTH as the mangled body of OSIRIS (wholeness will be
regained only with the Second Coming)
have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till
her Master's second coming; he shall bring together every joint and
member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness
and perfection. Suffer not these licensing prohibitions to stand at every
place of opportunity, forbidding and disturbing them that continue
seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our
martyred saint.

dissevered pieces which are yet wanting to the body of Truth.

It is not the unfrocking of a priest, the unmitring of a bishop,
and the removing him from off the presbyterian shoulders,
that will make us a happy nation. No, if other things as great in
the Church, and in the rule of life both economical and
political, be not looked into and reformed, we have looked so
long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin hath beaconed
up to us, that we are stark blind. There be who perpetually
complain of schisms and sects, and make it such a calamity
that any man dissents from their maxims.
Tis their own pride and ignorance which causes the disturbing, who neither will hear with
meekness, nor can convince; yet all must be suppressed which is not found in their Syntagma. They
are the troublers, they are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not others to unite those
dissevered pieces which are yet wanting to the body of Truth. To be still searching what we know
not by what we know, still closing up truth to truth as we find it (for all her body is homogeneal and
proportional), this is the golden rule in theology as well as in arithmetic, and makes up the best
harmony in a Church; not the forced and outward union of cold, and neutral, and inwardly divided
minds. Lords and Commons of England! consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye
are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to
invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human
capacity can soar to. Therefore the studies of learning in her deepest sciences have been so ancient
and so eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and ablest judgment have been persuaded
that even the school of Pythagoras and the Persian wisdom took beginning from the old philosophy
of this island. And that wise and civil Roman, Julius Agricola, who governed once here for Caesar,
preferred the natural wits of Britain before the laboured studies of the French. Nor is it for nothing
that the grave and frugal Transylvanian sends out yearly from as far as the mountainous borders of
Russia, and beyond the Hercynian wilderness, not their youth, but their staid men, to learn our
language and our theologic arts.
REFORMING THE REFORMATION
God is decreeing to begin some new and great
period in his Church, even to the reforming of
Reformation itself: what does he then but reveal
himself to his servants, and as his manner is, first
to his Englishmen? I say, as his manner is, first to
us, though we mark not the method of his
counsels, and are unworthy.
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing,
much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in
the making. Under these fantastic terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the
earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding which God
hath stirred up in this city. What some lament of, we rather should rejoice at,
should rather praise this pious forwardness among men, to reassume the ill-
deputed care of their religion into their own hands again. A little generous
prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and some grain of charity
might win all these diligences to join, and unite in one general and brotherly
search after truth; could we but forgo this prelatical tradition of crowding
free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men. I
doubt not, if some great and worthy stranger should come among us, wise to
discern the mould and temper of a people, and how to govern it, observing
the high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity of our extended thoughts and
reasonings in the pursuance of truth and freedom, but that he would cry out
as Pyrrhus did, admiring the Roman docility and courage: If such were my
Epirots, I would not despair the greatest design that could be attempted, to
make a Church or kingdom happy.
Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself
like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks
I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her
undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her
long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the
whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love
the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their
envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.
Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers
over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again,
when we shall know nothing but what is
measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords
and Commons, they who counsel ye to such a
suppressing do as good as bid ye suppress
yourselves; and I will soon show how
Ye cannot make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly
pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so,
less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. We can grow
ignorant again, brutish, formal and slavish, as ye found us; but you then
must first become that which ye cannot be, oppressive, arbitrary and
tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us…. Although I
dispraise not the defence of just immunities, yet love my peace better,
if that were all. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue
freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
YOKE OF CONFORMITY
fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print
upon our necks; the ghost of a linen decency yet haunts us. We
stumble and are impatient at the least dividing of one visible
congregation from another, though it be not in fundamentals; and
through our forwardness to suppress, and our backwardness to recover
any enthralled piece of truth out of the gripe of custom, we care not to
keep truth separated from truth, which is the fiercest rent and disunion
of all. We do not see that, while we still affect by all means a rigid
external formality, we may as soon fall again into a gross conforming
stupidity, a stark and dead congealment of wood and hay and stubble,
forced and frozen together, which is more to the sudden degenerating
of a Church than many subdichotomies of petty schisms.
who hath so bejesuited us that we should trouble that man with asking
license to do so worthy a deed?