Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of EnglandMilton, John
Philosophy
Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England
Milton, John
Freedom of the press -- Early works to 1800
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 put by the Papist into the first rank of prohibited books. The
ancientest Fathers 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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