Areopagitica | Page 2

private persons are hereby animated to think ye better pleased with
public advice, than other statists have been delighted heretofore with
public flattery. And men will then see what difference there is between
the magnanimity of a triennial Parliament, and that jealous haughtiness
of prelates and cabin counsellors that usurped of late, whenas they shall
observe ye in the midst of your victories and successes more gently
brooking written exceptions against a voted Order than other courts,
which had produced nothing worth memory but the weak ostentation of
wealth, would have endured the least signified dislike at any sudden
proclamation.
If I should thus far presume upon the meek demeanour of your civil and

gentle greatness, Lords and Commons, as what your published Order
hath directly said, that to gainsay, I might defend myself with ease, if
any should accuse me of being new or insolent, did they but know how
much better I find ye esteem it to imitate the old and elegant humanity
of Greece, than the barbaric pride of a Hunnish and Norwegian
stateliness. And out of those ages, to whose polite wisdom and letters
we owe that we are not yet Goths and Jutlanders, I could name him
who from his private house wrote that discourse to the Parliament of
Athens, that persuades them to change the form of democracy which
was then established. Such honour was done in those days to men who
professed the study of wisdom and eloquence, not only in their own
country, but in other lands, that cities and signiories heard them gladly,
and with great respect, if they had aught in public to admonish the state.
Thus did Dion Prusaeus, a stranger and a private orator, counsel the
Rhodians against a former edict; and I abound with other like examples,
which to set here would be superfluous.
But if from the industry of a life wholly dedicated to studious labours,
and those natural endowments haply not the worst for two and fifty
degrees of northern latitude, so much must be derogated, as to count me
not equal to any of those who had this privilege, I would obtain to be
thought not so inferior, as yourselves are superior to the most of them
who received their counsel: and how far you excel them, be assured,
Lords and Commons, there can no greater testimony appear, than when
your prudent spirit acknowledges and obeys the voice of reason from
what quarter soever it be heard speaking; and renders ye as willing to
repeal any Act of your own setting forth, as any set forth by your
predecessors.
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, 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 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 quadragesimal and matrimonial 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 loath 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 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 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.
I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and
Commonwealth, to 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 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