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John Milton's Aeropagitica, Part Two
But some will say, what though the inventors were bad, the thing
for all that may be good? It may 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
forborne 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; I am of
those who believe it will be a harder
alchemy than
Lullius ever
knew, to
sublimate any good use out of such an invention. Yet this
only is what I request to gain from this reason, that it may be
held a dangerous and suspicious fruit, as certainly it deserves,
for the tree that bore it, until I can dissect one by one the
properties it has. But I have first to finish, as was propounded,
what is to be thought in general of reading books, whatever sort
they be, and whether be more the benefit or the harm that thence
proceeds.
Not to insist upon the examples of Moses, Daniel, and Paul, who
were skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and
Greeks, which could not probably be without reading their books of
all sorts; in Paul especially, who thought it no defilement to
insert into Holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets, and
one of them a tragedian; the question was notwithstanding sometimes
controverted among the primitive doctors, but with great odds on
that side which affirmed it both lawful and profitable; as was then
evidently perceived, when Julian the Apostate and subtlest enemy to
our faith made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen
learning: for, said he, they wound us with our own weapons, and
with our own arts and sciences they overcome us. And indeed the
Christians were put so to their shifts by this crafty means, and so
much in danger to decline into all ignorance, that the two
Apollinarii were fain, as a man may say, to coin all the seven
liberal sciences out of the Bible, reducing it into divers forms of
orations, poems, dialogues, even to the calculating of a new
Christian grammar. But, saith the historian Socrates, the
providence of God provided better than the industry of Apollinarius
and his son, by taking away that illiterate law with the life of
him who devised it. So great an injury they then held it to be
deprived of Hellenic learning; and thought it a persecution more
undermining, and secretly decaying the Church, than the open
cruelty of Decius or Diocletian.
And perhaps it was the same politic drift that the devil
whipped St. Jerome in a lenten dream, for reading Cicero; or else
it was a phantasm bred by the fever which had then seized him. For
had an angel been his discipliner, unless it were for dwelling too
much upon Ciceronianisms, and had chastised the reading, not the
vanity, it had been plainly partial; first to correct him for grave
Cicero, and not for scurril Plautus, whom he confesses to have been
reading, not long before; next to correct him only, and let so many
more ancient fathers wax old in those pleasant and florid studies
without the lash of such a tutoring apparition; insomuch that Basil
teaches how some good use may be made of Margites, a sportful
poem, not now extant, writ by Homer; and why not then of
Morgante, an Italian romance much to the same purpose?
But if it be agreed we shall be tried by visions, there is a
vision recorded by Eusebius, far ancienter than this tale of
Jerome, to the nun Eustochium, and, besides, has nothing of a fever
in it. Dionysius Alexandrinus was about the year 240 a person of
great name in the Church 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
volumes. The worthy man, loath 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. Whereof what better
witness can ye expect I should produce, than one of your own now
sitting in Parliament, the chief of 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 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
universal diet of man's body, saving ever the 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 therefore when he himself tabled the Jews
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 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; there were but little work left for preaching, if law
and compulsion should grow so fast upon those things which
heretofore were governed only by exhortation. 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. As for the burning of those Ephesian books by
St. Paul's converts; 'tis replied the books were magic, the Syriac
so renders them. It was a private act, a voluntary act, and leaves
us to a voluntary imitation: the men in remorse burnt those books
which were 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 field of this world grow up
together almost 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
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 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
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 warfaring 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.
But of the harm that may result hence three kinds are usually
reckoned. First, is feared the infection that may spread; but then
all human learning and controversy in religious points must remove
out of the world, yea the Bible itself; for that ofttimes relates
blasphemy not nicely, it describes the carnal sense of wicked men
not unelegantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring
against Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus: in other
great disputes it answers dubiously and darkly to the common
reader. And ask a Talmudist what ails the modesty of his marginal
Keri, that Moses and all the prophets cannot persuade him to
pronounce the textual Chetiv. For these causes we all know the
Bible itself put by the Papist must be next removed, as Clement of
Alexandria, and that Eusebian book of Evangelic preparation,
transmitting our ears through a hoard of heathenish obscenities to
receive the Gospel. Who finds not that Irenaeus, Epiphanius,
Jerome, and others discover more heresies than they well confute,
and that oft for heresy which is the truer opinion?
Nor boots it to say for these, and all the heathen writers of
greatest infection, if it must be thought so, with whom is bound up
the life of human learning, that they writ in an unknown tongue, so
long as we are sure those languages are known as well to the worst
of men, who are both most able and most diligent to instil the
poison they suck, first into the courts of princes, acquainting
them with the choicest delights and criticisms of sin. As perhaps
did that Petronius whom Nero called his Arbiter, the master of his
revels; and the notorious ribald of Arezzo, dreaded and yet dear to
the Italian courtiers. I name not him for posterity's sake, whom
Henry VIII named in merriment his vicar of hell. By which
compendious way all the contagion that foreign books can infuse
will find a passage to the people far easier and shorter than an
Indian voyage, though it could be sailed either by the north of
Cataio eastward, or of Canada westward, while our Spanish licensing
gags the English press never so severely.
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. It will be hard to instance where any
ignorant man hath been ever seduced by papistical book in English,
unless it were commended and expounded to him by some of that
clergy: and indeed all such tractates, whether false or true, are
as the prophecy of Isaiah was to the eunuch, not to be
UNDERSTOOD WITHOUT A GUIDE. But of our priests and doctors how
many have been corrupted by studying the comments of Jesuits and
Sorbonists, and how fast they could transfuse that corruption into
the people, our experience is both late and sad. It is not forgot,
since the acute and distinct Arminius was perverted merely by the
perusing of a nameless discourse written at Delft, which at first
he took in hand to confute.
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 and impossible attempts. And he
who were pleasantly disposed could not well avoid to liken it to
the exploit of that gallant man who thought to pound up the crows
by shutting his park gate.
Besides another inconvenience, if learned men be the first
receivers out of books and dispreaders both of vice and error, how
shall the licensers themselves be confided in, unless we can confer
upon them, or they assume to themselves above all others in the
land, the grace of infallibility and uncorruptedness? 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. 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.
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. To which I return, that as it
was a thing slight and obvious to think on, so if it had been
difficult to find out, there wanted not among them long since who
suggested such a course; which they not following, leave us a
pattern of their judgment that it was not the rest knowing, but the
not approving, which was the cause of their not using it.
Plato, a man of high authority, indeed, but least of all for his
Commonwealth, in the book of his Laws, which no city ever yet
received, fed his fancy by making many edicts to his airy
burgomasters, which they who otherwise admire him wish had been
rather buried and excused in the genial cups of an Academic night
sitting. By which laws he seems to tolerate no kind of learning
but by unalterable decree, consisting most of practical traditions,
to the attainment whereof a library of smaller bulk than his own
Dialogues would be abundant. And there also enacts, that no poet
should so much as read to any private man what he had written,
until the judges and law-keepers had seen it, and allowed it. But
that Plato meant this law peculiarly to that commonwealth which he
had imagined, and to no other, is evident. Why was he not else a
lawgiver to himself, but a transgressor, and to be expelled by his
own magistrates; both for the wanton epigrams and dialogues which
he made, and his perpetual reading of Sophron Mimus and
Aristophanes, books of grossest infamy, and also for commending the
latter of them, though he were the malicious libeller of his chief
friends, to be read by the tyrant Dionysius, who had little need of
such trash to spend his time on? But that he knew this licensing
of poems had reference and dependence to many other provisos there
set down in his fancied republic, which in this world could have no
place: and so neither he himself, nor any magistrate or city, ever
imitated that course, which, taken apart from those other
collateral injunctions, must needs be vain and fruitless. For if
they fell upon one kind of strictness, unless their care were equal
to regulate all other things of like aptness to corrupt the mind,
that single endeavour they knew would be but a fond labour; to shut
and fortify one gate against corruption, and be necessitated to
leave others round about wide open.
If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we
must regulate all recreation 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.
Part Three