these constant exercises at home, there is another opportunity of gaining experience to be won from pleasure itself abroad: in those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is 5 calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth. I should not, therefore, be a persuader to them of studying much then, laid their grounds, but to ride out in companies with prudent and staid guides to all the quarters of the land, learning and observing all places of strength, all commodities of building and of soil for towns and tillage, harbours, and ports for trade. Sometimes taking sea as far as to our navy, to learn there also what they can in the practical knowledge of sailing and of sea-fight. These ways would try all their peculiar gifts of nature, and if there were any secret excellence among them, would fetch it out and give it fair opportunities to advance itself by, which could not but mightily redound to the good of this nation, and bring into fashion again those old admired virtues and excellencies with far more knowledge now in this purity of Christian knowledge. Nor shall we then need the monsieurs of Paris to take our hopeful youth into their slight and prodigal custodies, and send them over back again transformed into mimics, apes, and kekshose.23 But if they desire to see other countries at three or four and twenty years of age, not to learn principles, but to enlarge experience and make wise observation, they will by that time be such as shall deserve the regard and honour of all men where they pass, and the society and friendship of those in all places who are best and most eminent. And perhaps then other nations will be glad to visit us for their breeding, or else to imitate us in their own country. ardice of doing wrong. They must be also practised in all the locks and gripes of wrestling, wherein Englishmen were wont to excel, as need may often be in fight to tug, to grapple, and to close. And this, perhaps, will be enough wherein to prove and heat their single strength. The interim of unsweating themselves regularly, and convenient rest before meat, may both with profit and delight be taken up in recreating and composing their travailed spirits with the 10 after two or three years that they have well solemn and divine harmonies of music heard or learned, either whilst the skilful organist plies his grave and fancied descant in lofty fugues, or the whole symphony with artful and unimaginable touches adorn and grace the well- 15 studied chords of some choice composer; sometimes the lute or soft organ-stop, waiting on elegant voices either to religious, martial, or civil ditties, which, if wise men and prophets be not extremely out, have a great power over 20 dispositions and manners to smooth and make them gentle from rustic harshness and distempered passions. The like also would not be unexpedient after meat, to assist and cherish nature in her first concoction, and send their 25 minds back to study in good tune and satisfaction. Where having followed it close under vigilant eyes until about two hours before supper, they are, by a sudden alarum or watchword, to be called out to their military 30 motions, under sky or covert, according to the season, as was the Roman wont; first on foot, then, as their age permits, on horseback, to all the art of cavalry; that having in sport, but with much exactness and daily muster, served 35 out the rudiments of their soldiership in all the skill of embattling, marching, encamping, fortifying, besieging, and battering, with all the helps of ancient and modern strategems, tactics, and warlike maxims, they may, as it 40 were out of a long war, come forth renowned and perfect commanders in the service of their country. They would not then, if they were trusted with fair and hopeful armies, suffer them for want of just and wise discipline to shed 45 away from about them like sick feathers, though they be never so oft supplied; they would not suffer their empty and unrecruitable colonels of twenty men in a company to quaff out or convey into secret hoards the wages of a delusive list and miserable remnant; yet in the meanwhile to be overmastered with a score or two of drunkards, the only soldiery left about them, or else to comply with all rapines and violences. No, certainly, if they knew aught of 55 that knowledge that belongs to good men or good governors they would not suffer these things. But to return to our own institute. Besides Now, lastly, for their diet there cannot be much to say, save only that it would be best in the same house; for much time else would be lost abroad, and many ill habits got; and that it should be plain, healthful, and moderate, I suppose is out of controversy. Thus, Mr. Hartlib, you have a general view in writing, as your desire was, of that which at 50 several times I had discoursed with you concerning the best and noblest way of education; not beginning, as some have done, from the cradle, which yet might be worth many considerations, if brevity had not been my scope. Many other circumstances also I could have mentioned, but this, to such as have the worth in them to make trial, for light and Kickshaws (Fr. quelque chose) trifling, fantastic 22 1. e., things. loth to own; next what is to be thought in general of reading, whatever sort the books be; and that this Order avails nothing to the suppressing of scandalous, seditious, and libellous 5 books, which were mainly intended to be suppressed. Last, that it will be primely to the discouragement of all learning, and the stop of Truth, not only by the disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already, direction may be enough. Only I believe that this is not a bow for every man to shoot in, that counts himself a teacher, but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses; yet I am withal persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the assay than it now seems at distance, and much more illustrious: howbeit, not more difficult than I imagine, and that imagination presents me with nothing but very happy and very possible 10 but by hindering and cropping the discovery according to best wishes, if God have so decreed, and this age have spirit and capacity enough to apprehend. AREOPAGITICA1 (1644) (Selections) 2 that might be yet further made both in religious and civil Wisdom. I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to 15 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 20 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 25 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 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 a 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, 30 unless the same be first approved and licensed by such, or at least one of such as shall be thereto appointed. For that part which preserves justly every man's copy to himself, or provides for the poor, I touch not, only wish they be not 35 and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond made pretences to abuse and persecute honest and painful men, who offend not in either of these particulars. But that other clause of Licensing Books, which we thought had died with his brother quadragesimal1 and matrimonial 40 when the prelates expired, I shall now attend with such a homily, as shall lay before ye, first the inventors of it, to be those whom ye will be 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 com 1i. e., address to the Areopagus. By the Arcopagus Milton means the English Parliament, which he thus 45 mitted, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it likens to the Greek Areopagus, the high council and court of ancient Athens. One of the orations of Isocrates, the Attic orator, is known as Logos Areopagitikos, the Areopagitic Discourse. As Isocrates appealed to the ancient Areopagus (the high court of Ares, "or Mars," Hill), so Milton appeals to the modern Areopagus, "the Lords and Commons of England" assembled in Parliament, and 50 hence he calls his appeal an Areopagitic address. 2 i. e., resolved to do what has just been urged by Milton in the preceding passage; viz. to "obey the voice of reason from whatever quarter it be heard speaking," and to repeal any Parliamentary act of your own as willingly as you would one passed by your predecessors in Parliament. The ordinance of 1643, reëstablishing a censorship of the press, which had been substantially free since 1640. 4 Pertaining to Lent, a season of forty days. Ecclesiastical rules for the observence of Lent, and ecclesiastical views of marriage (which Milton regarded as a civil contract and not as a sacrament) had "died when the prelates expired." but the censorship of the press (which Milton calls their brother) is continued. 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. 5 See the stories of Cadmus and of Jason. God's image is reflected in a good book as the image of outward objects is on the retina of the eye. 7 The whole edition; here, all the copies printed. 8 Aristotle holds that there are five elements, earth, water, air, fire, ether; the last is the "fifth element," or quintessence (fifth essence), which is not subject to change. He who destroys all the copies of a book, does not merely destroy a thing subject to change (like the first Tour elements), he destroys part of a man's spirit preserved and stored up in a good book beyond the term of mortal life, he slays the "fifth essence," the man's ethereal part, an immortality rather than a life." JOHN MILTON 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. learned men reputed in this land, Mr. Selden," whose volume of natural and national laws proves, not only by great authorities brought together, but by exquisite reasons and theorems 5 almost mathematically demonstrative, that all opinions, yea errors, known, read, and collated, are of main service and assistance toward the speedy attainment of what is truest. I conceive, therefore, that when God did enlarge the [An historical survey here follows, showing 10 universal diet of man's body, saving ever the the position of the authorities in Athens, Lacedæmon, and Rome, in regard to the Continuing the history question at issue. through early Christian times, Milton finally contends that the system of press censorship, 15 'engendered" by which he condemned, was the Council of Trent (1546) and the Spanish Inquisition.] 66 rules of temperance, He then also, as before, left arbitrary the dieting and repasting of our minds; as wherein every mature man might have to exercise his own leading capacity. How great a virtue is temperance, how much of moment through the whole life of man! yet God commits the managing so great a trust, without particular law or prescription, wholly to the demeanour of every grown man. And Dionysius Alexandrinus was about the year 240, a person of great name in the Church 20 therefore when He Himself tabled the Jews for piety and learning, who had wont to avail himself much against heretics by being conversant in their books; until a certain presbyter laid it scrupulously to his conscience, how he durst venture himself among those defiling 25 those actions which enter into a man, rather from heaven, that omer, which was every man's daily portion of manna, is computed to have been more than might have well sufficed the heartiest feeder thrice as many meals. For 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; there volumes. 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: 30 were but little work left for preaching, if law 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 35 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 40 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 and compulsion should grow so fast upon those evil substance; and yet God in that unapocry- 45 men in remorse burnt those books which were Bad their own; the magistrate by this example is not appointed: these men practised the books, another might perhaps have read them in some sort usefully. Good and evil we know in the inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused phal 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 50 field of this world grow up together almost not unappliable to occasions of evil. 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 re- 55 spects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate. Whereof what better witness can ye expect I should produce, than one of your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of John Selden (1584-1654), jurist, antiquary, and author. He was member of the Long Parliament (1640) and one of the Committee which impeached Archbishop Laud. As an author, he is chiefly remembered by his Table-Talk. Milton here refers to Selden's treatise De Jure Naturali et Gentium, etc., 1640. 10 Acts, xix., 19. 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 5 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 seeds which were imposed on Psychell 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 fell 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 10 licensers? The villages also must have their continuance 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 15 Monte Mayors. 15 Next, what more national 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 20 those houses where drunkenness is sold and visitors to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebeck reads even to the ballatry,' 14 and the gamut of every municipal fiddler, for these are the countryman's Arcadias, and his 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 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, 16 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 con- 25 templation 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; 12 which was the reason why our sage and serious poet 30 Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas, describing true temperance under the person of Guion, 13 brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bower of earthly 35 which never can be drawn into use, will not bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain. Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in the world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how 40 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 45 read. . . 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 50 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 55 ask more than the work of twenty licensers to 11 See the familiar story of Cupid and Psyche, told by Apuleius. 12 i. e., only superficial, only "skin-deep." 13 See Faerie Queene, Bk. II. mend our condition; but to ordain wisely as in this world of evil, in the midst whereof God hath placed us unavoidably. 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 14 Ballads, the popular songs. 15 Jorge de Montemayor (c. 1520–1561), author of the Spanish pastoral drama Diana. Sidney's Arcadia is a work of the same general character. 16 To withdraw (sequester) ourselves from the actual world, into such ideal and visionary systems of government as those pictured by Bacon in his New Atlantis, or More in his Utopia, "will not mend" etc. JOHN MILTON could a man require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, 5 to make a knowing people, a Nation of Prophets, of Sages, and of Worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks; had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already. Where there is 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-reputed 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 forego this prelatical tradition of crowding free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men. 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 20 did, admiring the Roman docility and courage: If such were my Epirots, 21 I would not despair the greatest design that could be attempted to make a Church or Kingdom happy. Yet these are the men cried out against for schismatics Cæsar, 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,18 not their youth, but their staid men, to learn our language, and our theologic arts. Yet that which is above all this, the favour and the love of Heaven, we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner 10 desire to learn, there of necessity will be much propitious and propending towards us. Why else was this Nation chosen before any other, that out of her as out of Sion should be proclaimed and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europe? And 15 had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wickliff, to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Huss and Jerome, 19 no nor the name 20 of Luther, or of Calvin had been ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbours had But now, as our obbeen completely ours. durate clergy have with violence demeaned the matter, we are become hitherto the latest and 25 backwardest scholars, of whom God offered to have made us the teachers. Now once again by all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly express their thoughts, God is 30 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, 35 first to us, though we mark not the method of His counsels, and are unworthy. Behold now this vast City: a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not 40 and sectaries; as if, while the temple of the there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed Justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, re- 45 volving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. I Lord was building, some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort 22 of irrational men who could not consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world; neither can What 50 every piece of the building be of one form; nay rather the perfection consists in this: that out of many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportional, arises the goodly and the graceful symmetry that commends the whole 17 Transylvania (the land beyond the Carpathian forests, trans-sylva), since 1868 a part of Hungary, was an independent principality in Milton's time. 18 The Hercynia silva of Pliny was a wild region of undefined limits south of the Caspian (or Hyrcane) Sea. But Milton, apparently, is thinking here of a remote 55 district near Transylvania in the neighborhood of the Carpathian mountains. 19 Jerome of Prague, a religious reformer of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, who was a follower of John Huss. John Wyclif died in 1384; Huss was burned for heresy in 1415, and Jerome in 1416. 20 Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. He is reported to have made a remark similar to the one here attributed to him after his hard-won victory over the Romans in the battle of Heraclea, 280 B. C. 21 Men of Epirus. 22 Group, company. |