Areopagitica

“Nevertheless, there being three principal things without which all praising is but courtship and flattery. First, when that only is praised which is solidly worth praise; next, when greatest likelihoods are brought that such things are truly and really in those persons to whom they are ascribed; the other, when he who praises, by showing that such his actual persuasion is of whom he writes, can demonstrate that he flatters not.”

By prefacing his argument with his assertions on flattery and praise, Milton is assuring Parliament that the praise he offers is genuine and that the advice he will offer is a form of praise. What is unspoken but implied is that his advice is also criticism, but his criticism comes from a genuine desire to make Parliament and England better. While a king would expect flattery, Milton is explaining that he will not offer empty flatter because Parliament is better than a king and should want the honest and thoughtful feedback of private citizens.

“It will 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.” 

Milton predicts that the licensing act will cause a decline in the education and astuteness of the populace. Since, as he argues, spiritual and intellectual growth require a constant seeking of truth and knowledge, censoring what citizens are allowed to read will stymie that search. If the government spoon-feeds what they believe to be right and moral literature, people will stop debating or thinking for themselves. And while Parliament fears schisms and new sects in the church, Milton encourages them as proof that truth is a living thing that can be further located, discovered, and understood. Milton asserts that “religious and civil wisdom” (340) are neither finite or frozen, and it is the responsibility of the English, to whom the Reformation has been given, to continue the unending search for truth.

“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.” 

As a writer, it is unsurprising that Milton considers texts to be embodiments of their authors’ spirits. If a book is the progeny of an author’s soul, it should be treated as sacred. He refers to the Greek myth of “Jason and the Golden Fleece,” in which Cadmus, a Phoenician prince, acquired dragon’s teeth and gave them to Jason to plant. Once sowed, the teeth grew into an army of soldiers. The metaphor of dragon’s teeth represents the taking of deliberate action rather than waiting for fate or the gods to steer the narrative. In this case, the books are dragon’s teeth and they sprout into an army of men ready to fight. Since Parliament is at war, this is an apt image.

“Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroy as good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.” 

If books “preserve as in a vial he purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellect that bred them” (341), then the destruction or alteration of a book is tantamount to attacking a human soul. A book represents the author’s legacy, and a censor should not have the right to revise what Milton considered to be the progeny of his soul. Since man is a creature who reasons, and reason arises from men, killing a book, the product and evidence of that reasoning, is killing reason itself. He reminds Parliament that a man is supposedly created in the image of God, so destroying a man or a man’s soul is the same as killing the image of God.

“Many a man lives a burden to the earth, but a good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.” 

A book is an immortal manifestation of the spirit that produces it. While men can be good or bad, or can become a drain on society, a book is only that spirit distilled. He notes that killing a man cannot be undone and that killing a book “slays an immortality rather than a life” (341). Since man is mortal, his death only reaches so far in terms of consequences, but killing what would have been an immortal truth has ramifications that reach through subsequent ages.

“I fear that their next design will be to get into their custody the licensing of that which they say Claudius intended but when not through with.” 

This refers sardonically to an incident told by the Roman historian Suetonius, in which the emperor Claudius considered writing a decree legalizing passing gas at the table because he heard of a person who died from holding it in. He is joking by comparing the strict control in which normal bodily functions are legislated to the licensing act, which controls the normal bodily function that is thinking and reasoning. Milton quips that the licensers might decide to censor the decree as lewd or immoral, effectively ending the right to pass gas whenever necessary.

“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.” 

By referring to classical mythology, Milton is demonstrating (as he does throughout the treatise) that even that which is pagan can be used for a Christianity-based argument. He refers to the myth in which Hercules’s mother is in labor. Juno, who is jealous of the mortal who her husband Jove impregnated, sends the goddess of childbirth to sit in front of the pregnant woman’s door with her legs and fingers crossed to impede the birth. Before the tyranny of the papacy and their licensing act, books were free to enter the world without hindrance. This comparison also continues the metaphor that likens books to humans and human souls.

“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 know the integrity of your actions and how ye honor truth will clear ye readily.” 

As Milton criticizes the members of Parliament, he also flatters them. He assures them that no one believes that they implemented the licensing act maliciously or with the intent to act like the papacy. However, his compliments are contingent upon the actions that Parliament take next. If, once informed that the licensing act is essentially papist in nature, they refuse to repeal it, then they are knowingly deciding to lead like the Catholics. 

“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 throughout all ages and occasions have forborne to use it, and falsest seducers and oppressors of men were the first who too 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.” 

Milton is refuting the obvious counterargument for his revelation about the papacy’s hand in influencing the licensing agreement, which is that even evil inventors might produce a good invention. He is claiming that, as an invention, the licensing act is hardly creative or innovative. The fact that so many civilizations throughout history did not have such a licensing act means that they chose not to censor, not that they could not think of it. Since the papacy used their licensing act to fight off the Reformation, it would be impossible for Parliament, which represents the Reformation, to use it for their own good. 

“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.” 

If the licensing act prohibits men from reading texts that might corrupt their minds, Milton is arguing that Parliament is presuming to take the place of the church. There will be nothing to preach about if the law has compelled men to censor what they consume rather than allowing them to think critically and make their own decisions. This is also accusing Parliament of doing what the Catholic Church and the Royalists have done by making government and religion one and the same. One of the main complaints that Parliament held against King Charles I was the fact that the clergy doubled as government officials, and Milton is suggesting that they are doing just that.

“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 labor to cull out and sort asunder were not more than intermixed.” 

With yet another reference to classical mythology, Milton asserts that good and evil cannot be so easily separated from one another. When Venus was envious of the beautiful Psyche, who loved her son Cupid, she gave her unperformable tasks to complete including separating out a large quantity of mixed seeds. But Milton is claiming that separating good from evil is even more impossible than Psyche’s task, because Psyche’s seeds were separate items that were simply mixed together. Good and evil are intertwined, and therefore one must be taken with the other. 

“It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leapt forth into the world.” 

Milton seamlessly juxtaposes a classical reference (Psyche and her seeds) with a biblical one (Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden). Since according to their religious beliefs, good and evil entered the world as one in the form of knowledge, they cannot be separated. In the case of the knowledge of good and evil bestowed by the apple, the knowledge came with free will and the responsibility of man to discern good from evil. 

“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary.” 

Milton claims that virtue is not virtue unless it is tried. He uses the language of war, an apt metaphor during the time of the English Civil War, and certainly one would not claim that a soldier was courageous or daring if he has never seen battle. Similarly, a person who claims to be virtuous and moral is making a weak claim if he has never been faced with the temptation to do otherwise. Free will allows a person to choose, demonstrating that he can make the right choice. Thus, the licensing agreement, which takes away free will, does not allow a person to exercise self-control and reflection to truly become virtuous.

“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.” 

Throughout the oration, Milton demonstrates through a plethora of allusions that a text need not be Christian to be useful to the educated mind. Even from works that would be heretical, such as texts of Greek and Roman mythology, can be helpful to a wise man such as Milton. He argues here that exposure to books does not make the man. A fool will be a fool no matter what book he reads (or doesn’t read). Making blanket proclamations that restrict reading will not help or hurt the fool who is the target of the licensing agreement, but it will injure the wise man who will no longer have all the tools he needs at his disposal. 

“A wise man will make better use of an idle pamphlet than a fool will do of sacred scripture.”

In the 16th, 17th, and 18th century, pamphlets became a medium to spread political rhetoric and ideas. This especially peaked in the 1600s as the population became increasingly literate. They were a cheap way to disseminate opinions and facilitate debates. Milton contends that for a wise man, even the most biased, common, and incendiary texts can be used to enrich and educate because a wise man has the critical thinking skills to consider what to accept or reject unlike the fool who will believe blindly. Even scripture, which for Milton and Parliament is the height of good and reliable text, will do nothing for the fool who cannot think deeply about it. To someone who believes blindly, believing scripture is meaningless when compared to a wise man who reads it, ponders, and chooses to accept it.

“And were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing.”

Milton is comparing the active doing of good deeds to the restraint of evil deeds. The licensing act will only prohibit men from reading about and presumably considering performing evil deeds. It will not make them good, only restricted. Milton is privileging the active commission of good deeds over the absence of evil deeds, explaining one good deed is better than many uncommitted bad deeds. This description feeds into the image of a stagnated society, in which censorship teaches citizens not to think for themselves. Without positive deeds, a society cannot progress even if the citizens do not commit sins. 

“He who is not trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known to be evil, and standing the hazard of law and penalty, has no great argument to think himself reputed in the commonwealth wherein he was born for other than a fool or foreigner.”

The commonwealth is a sacred thing to Milton, and he describes the citizens of England as divinely chosen to usher in the Reformation and run the commonwealth, a republic led by the people. In order to live in a society in which the populace has the power of the vote, Milton argues that a person must be educated and able to think for himself. The licensing act basically refuses to trust citizens who have not shown themselves to be evil. They are not allowed to make decisions about their own actions and lives. Such a citizen cannot be trusted to help run the commonwealth and deserves to be treated like a guest rather than an integral part of the decision-making process. 

“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 confers with his judicious friends; after all which done he takes himself to be informed in what he writes as well as any that write before him.” 

For a scholar such as Milton, it is insulting to suggest that men who author books are not doing their due diligence before disseminating their works. He not only thinks and researches but shares his work with fellow scholars. He makes sure that he knows his subject well and what other men have written about it. A book is thus the product of a scholarly community rather than one man. By leaving the power of publication in the hands of a censor, Parliament is empowering one likely underqualified man to shut down the labors of all intellectual society. Milton is trying to impress upon Parliament that writing a book is not something that a man does lightly without consideration.

“Truth and understanding are not such ware as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards.”

In such a system that Parliament controls what citizens can read, they are creating a dictatorship of truth. Censorship allows one truth rather than an ongoing dialogue about the potential facets of truth. Considering the fact that printing is a money-making venture, truth becomes a commodity. Milton is arguing that truth and understanding should not be commodified or monopolized because truth is a living thing that shifts and becomes more apparent as thinkers search for it. 

“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.”

Milton discusses the stagnation of society that will result from the licensing act. He argues that truth is meant to flow like water, constantly moving. Like truth, only flowing water remains clean and drinkable. Truth that is no longer allowed to be a subject for debate and discussion will become dirty and festering. 

“We boast our light, but if we look not wisely on the sun itself, it smites us into darkness.” 

Milton describes the English people as clever and intelligent, full of ideas and debate, yet he urges humility. While the English are educated and forward-thinking, they brag about how enlightened they are. However, if they do not respect that their enlightenment is insignificant and incomplete when compared to the mysteries of the universe, they will become backward through their faith in their own knowledge. Just as a bright light must respect the sun or risk being smote into darkness, English society must remain humble and remember to continue searching for truth and knowledge lest they find themselves crushed by more curious and knowledge-thirsty civilizations.

“Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection.” 

In this biblical reference, Milton compares England to the cities of refuge that God commanded the Jews to found. These cities of refuge are places of protection. Milton’s use of the reference describes London as a city of refuge, likely from Royalists. He describes it as a house of liberty, which contradicts statues that limit freedom. In the city of refuge that Milton imagines, there are as many scholars thinking and creating ideas as there are forgers making weapons. In this language free will is protected by God.

“Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

As a writer, Milton fights with words. He wrote tracts that helped to instate a largely Presbyterian Parliament. He writes tracts and treatises to promote different political agendas. To Milton, the restriction of those words is massively oppressive. Limiting the right to “argue freely according to conscience” is tyrannical. It doesn’t simply control actions. It controls the flow of ideas. Without the flow of ideas, men are empty pawns at the hands of their government. Therefore, Milton is arguing that of all liberties, he prizes the freedom to write and speak the most.