Excerpts from:
AREOPAGITICA
by John Milton
1644
Analysis of the Order of Parliament (June 14, 1643),
Against which the Areopagitica was Directed
1. The Preamble recounts that "many false...scandalous,
seditious,
and libellous" works have lately been published,
"to the great
defamation of Religion and government"; that many
private
printing-presses have been set up; and that "divers
of the Stationers'
Company" have infringed on the rights of the Company.
2. "It is therefore ordered by the Lords and Commons
in Parliament,"
(1) that no Order "of both or either House shall be
printed" except by
command; (2) that no Book, etc., "shall from
henceforth be printed
or put to sale, unless the same be first approved of and
licensed by
such person or persons as both or either of the said
Houses shall
appoint for the licensing of the same"; (3) that no
book, of which the
copyright has been granted to the Company, "for
their relief and the
maintenance of their poor," be printed by any person
or persons
"without the license and consent of the Master,
Warden, and assistants
of the said Company"; (4) that no book, "formerly
printed here," be
imported from beyond seas, "upon pain of forfeiting
the same to the
Owner" of the Copyright, "and such further
punishment as shall be
thought fit."
3. The Stationers' Company and the officers of the two
Houses are
authorised to search for unlicensed Presses, and to break
them up;
to search for unlicensed Books, etc., and confiscate
them; and to
"apprehend all authors, printers and others"
concerned in publishing
unlicensed books and to bring them before the Houses
"or the Committee
of Examination" for "further punishments,"
such persons not to be
released till they have given satisfaction and also
"sufficient
caution not to offend in like sort for the future."
4. "All justices of the Peace, Captains, Constables
and other
officers" are ordered to give aid in the execution
of the above.
A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING,
TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND (1644)
THEY, who to states and governors of the
Commonwealth direct their
speech, High Court of Parliament, or, wanting such access
in a private
condition, write that which they foresee may advance the
public
good; I suppose them, as at the beginning of no mean
endeavour, not
little altered and moved inwardly in their minds: some
with doubt of
what will be the success, others with fear of what will
be the
censure; some with hope, others with confidence of what
they have to
speak. And me perhaps each of these dispositions, as the
subject was
whereon I entered, may have at other times variously
affected; and
likely might in these foremost expressions now also
disclose which
of them swayed most, but that the very attempt of this
address thus
made, and the thought of whom it hath recourse to, hath
got the
power within me to a passion, far more welcome than
incidental to a
preface.
Which though I stay not to confess ere any ask, I shall
be
blameless, if it be no other than the joy and gratulation
which it
brings to all who wish and promote their country's
liberty; whereof
this whole discourse proposed will be a certain
testimony, if not a
trophy. For this is not the liberty which we can hope,
that no
grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth-that let
no man in
this world expect; but when complaints are freely heard,
deeply
considered and speedily reformed, then is the utmost
bound of civil
liberty attained that wise men look for.
***
If ye be thus resolved, as it were injury to think
ye were not, I
know not what should withhold me from presenting ye with
fit
instance wherein to show both that love of truth which ye
eminently
profess, and that uprightness of your judgment which is
not wont to be
partial to yourselves; by judging over again that Order
which ye
have ordained to regulate Printing:-that no book,
pamphlet, or paper
shall be henceforth printed, unless the same be first
approved and
licensed by such, or at least one of such, as shall be
thereto
appointed.
***
Last, that it will be primely to the discouragement
of all learning,
and the stop of Truth, not only by disexercising and
blunting our
abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and
cropping the
discovery that might be yet further made both in
religious and civil
Wisdom.
***
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.
***
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. Thus the books of Protagoras
were by the
judges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt, and himself
banished the
territory for a discourse begun with his confessing not
to know
"whether there were gods, or whether not." And
against defaming, it
was agreed that none should be traduced by name, as was
the manner
of Vetus Comoedia, whereby we may guess how they censured
libelling.
And this course was quick enough, as Cicero writes, to
quell both
the desperate wits of other atheists, and the open way of
defaming, as
the event showed. Of other sects and opinions, though
tending to
voluptuousness, and the denying of Divine Providence,
they took no
heed.
***
The Romans also, for many ages trained up only to a
military
roughness resembling most the Lacedaemonian guise, knew
of learning
little but what their twelve Tables, and the Pontific
College with
their augurs and flamens taught them in religion and law....
***
Except in these two points, how the world went in
books, the magistrate kept
no reckoning.
***
By this time the emperors were become Christians,
whose discipline
in this point I do not find to have been more severe than
what was
formerly in practice.
***
And that the primitive Councils and bishops were wont
only to declare what
books were not commendable, passing no further, but
leaving it to each one's
conscience to read or to lay by, till after the year 800,
is observed already by
Padre Paolo, the great unmasker of the Trentine Council.
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. Which
course Leo X.
and his successors followed, until the Council of Trent
and the
Spanish Inquisition engendering together brought forth,
or
perfected, those Catalogues and expurging Indexes, that
rake through
the entrails of an old good author, with a violation
worse than any
could be offered to his tomb. Nor did they stay in
matters
heretical, but any subject that was not to their palate,
they either
condemned in a Prohibition, or had it straight into the
new
Purgatory of an Index.
To fill up the measure of encroachment, their last
invention was
to ordain that no book, pamphlet, or paper should be
printed (as if
St. Peter had bequeathed them the keys of the press also
out of
Paradise) unless it were approved and licensed under the
hands of
two or three glutton friars.
***
And thus ye have the inventors and the original of
book-licensing
ripped and drawn as lineally as any pedigree. We have it
not, that can
be heard of, from any ancient state, or polity or church;
nor by any
statute left us by our ancestors elder or later; nor from
the modern
custom of any reformed city or church abroad; but from
the most
anti-christian council and the most tyrannous inquisition
that ever
inquired. 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....
***
But some will say, What though the inventors were
bad, the thing for
all that may be good? It may be so; yet if that thing be
no such
deep invention, but obvious, and easy for any man to
light on, and yet
best and wisest commonwealths through all ages and
occasions have
foreborne to use it, and falsest seducers and oppressors
of men were
the first who took it up, and to no other purpose but to
obstruct
and hinder the first approach of Reformation....
***
The worthy man, loth
to give offence, fell into a new debate with himself what
was to be
thought; when suddenly a vision sent from God (it is his
own epistle
that so avers it) confirmed him in these words: 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, leaving the choice
to each man's
discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ
little or
nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty
mind are not
unappliable to occasions of evil. Bad meats will scarce
breed good
nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the
difference is
of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious
reader serve in
many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and
to illustrate.
***
I conceive, therefore, that when God did enlarge the
universal
diet of man's body, saving ever the rules of temperance,
He then also,
as before, left arbitrary the dieting and repasting of
minds; as
wherein every mature man might have to exercise his own
leading
capacity.
***
For those actions which enter into a man,
rather than issue out of him, and therefore defile not,
God uses not
to captivate under a perpetual childhood of prescription,
but trusts
him with the gift of reason to be his own chooser....
***
Good and evil we know in the field of this world
grow up together
almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so
involved and
interwoven the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning
resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused
seeds which
were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull
out, and
sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out
the rind of
one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as
two twins
cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And
perhaps this is
that doom which Adam fill into of knowing good and evil,
that is to
say of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of
man now is;
what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to
forbear without
the knowledge of evil? 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
wayfaring Christian.
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue,
unexercised and
unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her
adversary, but
slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to
be run
for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not
innocence
into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which
purifies
us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. 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. Which was the reason why our sage and serious
poet Spenser,
whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than
Scotus or Aquinas,
describing true temperance under the person of Guion,
brings him in
with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bower
of earthly
bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain. 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.
***
And again, if it be true that
a wise man, like a good refiner, can gather gold out of
the
drossiest volume, and that a fool will be a fool with the
best book,
yea or without book; there is no reason that we should
deprive a
wise man of any advantage to his wisdom, while we seek to
restrain
from a fool, that which being restrained will be no
hindrance to his
folly. For if there should be so much exactness always
used to keep
that from him which is unfit for his reading, we should
in the
judgment of Aristotle not only, but of Solomon and of our
Saviour, not
vouchsafe him good precepts, and by consequence not
willingly admit
him to good books; as being certain that a wise man will
make better
use of an idle pamphlet, than a fool will do of sacred
Scripture.
'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.
***
If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify
manners, we
must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is
delightful
to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung,
but what is
grave and Doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no
gesture,
motion, or deportment be taught our youth but what by
their
allowance shall be thought honest; for such Plato was
provided of;
it will ask more than the work of twenty licensers to
examine all
the lutes, the violins, and the guitars in every house;
they must
not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be
licensed what
they may say. And who shall silence all the airs and
madrigals that
whisper softness in chambers? The windows also, and the
balconies must
be thought on; there are shrewd books, with dangerous
frontispieces,
set to sale; who shall prohibit them, shall twenty
licensers? The
villages also must have their visitors to inquire what
lectures the
bagpipe and the rebeck reads, even to the ballatry and
the gamut of
every municipal fiddler, for these are the countryman's
Arcadias,
and his Monte Mayors.
Next, what more national corruption, for which England
hears ill
abroad, than household gluttony: who shall be the rectors
of our daily
rioting? And what shall be done to inhibit the multitudes
that
frequent those houses where drunkenness is sold and
harboured? Our
garments also should be referred to the licensing of some
more sober
workmasters to see them cut into a less wanton garb. Who
shall
regulate all the mixed conversation of our youth, male
and female
together, as is the fashion of this country? Who shall
still appoint
what shall be discoursed what presumed, and no further?
Lastly, who
shall forbid and separate all idle resort, all evil
company? These
things will be, and must be; but how they shall be least
hurtful,
how least enticing, herein consists the grave and
governing wisdom
of a state.
To sequester out of the world into Atlantic and Utopian
polities
which never can be drawn into use, will not mend our
condition; but to
ordain wisely as in this world of evil, in the midst
whereof God
hath placed us unavoidably. Nor is it Plato's licensing
of books
will do this, which necessarily pulls along with it so
many other
kinds of licensing, as will make us all both ridiculous
and weary, and
yet frustrate; but those unwritten, or at least
unconstraining, laws
of virtuous education, religious and civil nurture, which
Plato
there mentions as the bonds and ligaments of the
commonwealth, the
pillars and the sustainers of every written statute;
these they be
which will bear chief sway in such matters as these, when
all
licensing will be easily eluded. Impunity and remissness,
for certain,
are the bane of a commonwealth; but here the great art
lies, to
discern in what the law is to bid restraint and
punishment, and in
what things persuasion only is to work.
If every action, which is good or evil in man at ripe
years, were to
be under pittance and prescription and compulsion, what
were virtue
but a name, what praise could be then due to well-doing,
what gramercy
to be sober, just, or continent? Many there be that
complain of Divine
Providence for suffering Adam to transgress; foolish
tongues! When God
gave him reason, He gave him freedom to choose, for
reason is but
choosing; he had been else a mere artificial Adam, such
an Adam as
he is in the motions. We ourselves esteem not of that
obedience, or
love, or gift, which is of force: God therefore left him
free, set
before him a provoking object, ever almost in his eyes;
herein
consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the
praise of his
abstinence. Wherefore did He create passions within us,
pleasures
round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the
very
ingredients of virtue?
They are not skilful considerers of human things, who
imagine to
remove sin by removing the matter of sin; for, besides
that it is a
huge heap increasing under the very act of diminishing,
though some
part of it may for a time be withdrawn from some persons,
it cannot
from all, in such a universal thing as books are; and
when this is
done, yet the sin remains entire. Though ye take from a
covetous man
all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left, ye cannot
bereave him
of his covetousness. Banish all objects of lust, shut up
all youth
into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any
hermitage,
ye cannot make them chaste, that came not thither so:
such great
care and wisdom is required to the right managing of this
point.
Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how much
we thus
expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue: for the matter
of them
both is the same; remove that, and ye remove them both
alike.
This justifies the high providence of God, who, though He
commands
us temperance, justice, continence, yet pours out before
us, even to a
profuseness, all desirable things, and gives us minds
that can
wander beyond all limit and satiety. Why should we then
affect a
rigour contrary to the manner of God and of nature, by
abridging or
scanting those means, which books freely permitted are,
both to the
trial of virtue and the exercise of truth? It would be
better done, to
learnthat the law must needs be frivolous, which goes to
restrain
things, uncertainly and yet equally working to good and
to evil. And
were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be
preferred before
many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing.
For God
sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous
person more
than the restraint of ten vicious.
***
...we may easily foresee what kind of licensers we
are
to expect hereafter, either ignorant, imperious, and
remiss, or basely
pecuniary. This is what I had to show, wherein this Order
cannot
conduce to that end whereof it bears the intention.
I lastly proceed from the no good it can do, to the
manifest hurt it
causes, in being first the greatest discouragement and
affront that
can be offered to learning, and to learned men.
***
If therefore ye
be loth to dishearten heartily and discontent, not the
mercenary
crew of false pretenders to learning, but the free and
ingenuous
sort of such as evidently were born to study, and love
learning for
itself, not for lucre or any other end but the service of
God and of
truth, and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of
praise which
God and good men have consented shall be the reward of
those whose
published labours advance the good of mankind, then know
that, so
far to distrust the judgment and the honesty of one who
hath but a
common repute in learning, and never yet offended, as not
to count him
fit to print his mind without tutor and examiner, lest he
should
drop a schism, or something of corruption, is the
greatest displeasure
and indignity to a free and knowing spirit that can be
put upon him.
***
When a
man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and
deliberation
to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious,
and likely
consults and confers with his judicious friends; after
all which
done he takes himself to be informed in what he writes,
as well as any
that writ before him. If, in this the most consummate act
of his
fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former
proof of his
abilities can bring him to that state of maturity, as not
to be
still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his
considerate
diligence, all his midnight watchings and expense of
Palladian oil, to
the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much
his younger,
perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who
never knew the
labour of bookwriting, and if he be not repulsed or
slighted, must
appear in print like a puny with his guardian, and his
censor's hand
on the back of his title to be his bail and surety that
he is no idiot
or seducer, it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation
to the author,
to the book, to the privilege and dignity of Learning.
And what if the author shall be one so copious of fancy,
as to
have many things well worth the adding come into his mind
after
licensing, while the book is yet under the press, which
not seldom
happens to the best and diligentest writers; and that
perhaps a
dozen times in one book? The printer dares not go beyond
his
licensed copy; so often then must the author trudge to
his
leave-giver, that those his new insertions may be viewed;
and many a
jaunt will be made, ere that licenser, for it must be the
same man,
can either be found, or found at leisure; meanwhile
either the press
must stand still, which is no small damage, or the author
lose his
accuratest thoughts, and send the book forth worse than
he had made
it, which to a diligent writer is the greatest melancholy
and vexation
that can befall.
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? When every
acute reader,
upon the first sight of a pedantic licence, will be ready
with these
like words to ding the book a quoit's distance from him:
I hate a
pupil teacher, I endure not an instructor that comes to
me under the
wardship of an overseeing fist. I know nothing of the
licenser, but
that I have his own hand here for his arrogance; who
shall warrant
me his judgment? The State, sir, replies the stationer,
but has a
quick return: The State shall be my governors, but not my
critics;
they may be mistaken in the choice of a licenser, as
easily as this
licenser may be mistaken in an author; this is some
common stuff;
and he might add from Sir Francis Bacon, That such
authorised books
are but the language of the times. For though a licenser
should happen
to be judicious more than ordinary, which will be a great
jeopardy
of the next succession, yet his very office and his
commission enjoins
him to let pass nothing but what is vulgarly received
already.
***
Henceforth let no man care to learn, or care to be
more
than worldly-wise; for certainly in higher matters to be
ignorant
and slothful, to be a common steadfast dunce, will be the
only
pleasant life, and only in request.
***
Truth and
understanding are not such wares as to be monopolised and
traded in by
tickets and statutes and standards. 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?
***
And lest some should persuade ye, Lords and Commons,
that these
arguments of learned men's discouragement at this your
Order are
mere flourishes, and not real, I could recount what I
have seen and
heard in other countries, where this kind of inquisition
tyrannises;
when I have sat among their learned men, for that honour
I had, and
been counted happy to be born in such a place of
philosophic
freedom, as they supposed England was, while themselves
did nothing
but bemoan the servile condition into which learning
amongst them
was brought; that this was it which had damped the glory
of Italian
wits; that nothing had been there written now these many
years but
flattery and fustian. 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.
***
That this is
not therefore the disburdening of a particular fancy, but
the common
grievance of all those who had prepared their minds and
studies
above the vulgar pitch to advance truth in others, and
from others
to entertain it, thus much may satisfy.
And in their name I shall for neither friend nor foe
conceal what
the general murmur is; that if it come to inquisitioning
again and
licensing, and that we are so timorous of ourselves, and
so suspicious
of all men, as to fear each book and the shaking of every
leaf, before
we know what the contents are; if some who but of late
were little
better than silenced from preaching shall come now to
silence us
from reading, except what they please, it cannot be
guessed what is
intended by some but a second tyranny over learning: and
will soon put
it out of controversy, that Bishops and Presbyters are
the same to us,
both name and thing.
***
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 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.
***
For if we be sure we are in the right, and do not
hold the truth
guiltily, which becomes not, if we ourselves condemn not
our own
weak and frivolous teaching, and the people for an
untaught and
irreligious gadding rout, what can be more fair than when
a man
judicious, learned, and of a conscience, for aught we
know, as good as
theirs that taught us what we know, shall not privily
from house to
house, which is more dangerous, but openly by writing
publish to the
world what his opinion is, what his reasons, and
wherefore that
which is now thought cannot be sound? Christ urged it as
wherewith
to justify himself, that he preached in public; yet
writing is more
public than preaching; and more easy to refutation, if
need be,
there being so many whose business and profession merely
it is to be
the champions of Truth; which if they neglect, what can
be imputed but
their sloth, or unability?
***
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 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.
***
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 would ye do then? should ye suppress all this
flowery crop of
knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily
in this
city? 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. If it be
desired to
know the immediate cause of all this free writing and
free speaking,
there cannot be assigned a truer than your own mild and
free and
humane government. It is the liberty, Lords and Commons,
which your
own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us,
liberty which is
the nurse of all great wits; this is that which hath
rarefied and
enlightened our spirits like the influence of heaven;
this is that
which hath enfranchised, enlarged and lifted up our
apprehensions
degrees above themselves.
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. That
our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more
erected to the
search and expectation of greatest and exactest things,
is the issue
of your own virtue propagated in us; ye cannot suppress
that, unless
ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law, that fathers
may despatch
at will their own children. And who shall then stick
closest to ye,
and excite others? not he who takes up arms for coat and
conduct,
and his four nobles of Danegelt. 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.
***
And now the time in special is, by privilege to
write and speak what
may help to the further discussing of matters in
agitation. The temple
of Janus with his two controversial faces might now not
unsignificantly be set open. And though all the winds of
doctrine were
let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the
field, we do
injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt
her strength.
Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to
the worse,
in a free and open encounter?
***
For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the
Almighty? She
needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make
her
victorious; those are the shifts and the defences that
error uses
against her power.
***
How many
other things might be tolerated in peace, and left to
conscience,
had we but charity, and were it not the chief stronghold
of our
hypocrisy to be ever judging one another?
***
In the meantime if any one would write, and bring
his helpful hand
to the slow-moving Reformation which we labour under, if
Truth have
spoken to him before others, or but seemed at least to
speak, who hath
so bejesuited us that we should trouble that man with
asking licence
to do so worthy a deed? and not consider this, that if it
come to
prohibiting, there is not aught more likely to be
prohibited than
truth itself; whose first appearance to our eyes, bleared
and dimmed
with prejudice and custom, is more unsightly and
unplausible than many
errors, even as the person is of many a great man slight
and
contemptible to see to. And what do they tell us vainly
of new
opinions, when this very opinion of theirs, that none
must be heard,
but whom they like, is the worst and newest opinion of
all others; and
is the chief cause why sects and schisms do so much
abound, and true
knowledge is kept at distance from us; besides yet a
greater danger
which is in it?
For when God shakes a Kingdom with strong and healthful
commotions
to a general reforming, tis not untrue that many
sectaries and false
teachers are then busiest in seducing; but yet more true
it is, that
God then raises to His own work men of rare abilities,
and more than
common industry, not only to look back and revise what
hath been
taught heretofore, but to gain further and go on some new
enlightened steps in the discovery of truth.
***
. . .seeing no man who hath tasted learning, but will
confess the many ways of profiting by those who, not
contented with
stale receipts, are able to manage and set forth new
positions to
the world. And were they but as the dust and cinders of
our feet, so
long as in that notion they may yet serve to polish and
brighten the
armoury of Truth, even for that respect they were not
utterly to be
cast away. But if they be of those whom God hath fitted
for the
special use of these times with eminent and ample gifts,
and those
perhaps neither among the Priests nor among the
Pharisees, and we in
the haste of a precipitant zeal shall make no
distinction, but resolve
to stop their mouths, because we fear they come with new
and dangerous
opinions, as we commonly forejudge them ere we understand
them, no
less than woe to us, while, thinking thus to defend the
Gospel, we are
found the persecutors.
There have been not a few since the beginning of this
Parliament,
both of the Presbytery and others, who by their
unlicensed books, to
the contempt of an Imprimatur, first broke that triple
ice clung about
our hearts, and taught the people to see day.
***
For this authentic Spanish policy of licensing books,
if I have said
aught, will prove the most unlicensed book itself within
a short
while. . . .
***
But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I
skill not. This I
know, that errors in a good government and in a bad are
equally almost
incident; for what Magistrate may not be misinformed, and
much the
sooner, if Liberty of Printing be reduced into the power
of a few? But
to redress willingly and speedily what hath been erred,
and in highest
authority to esteem a plain advertisement more than
others have done a
sumptuous bribe, is a virtue (honoured Lords and Commons)
answerable
to your highest actions, and whereof none can participate
but greatest
and wisest men.
THE END
Full text available at Areopagitica
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