Areopagitica | Page 3

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. 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 and treasured up on purpose to
a life beyond 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 committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it 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. 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.
In Athens, where books and wits were ever busier than in any other part
of Greece, I find but only two sorts of writings which the magistrate
cared to take notice of; those either blasphemous and atheistical, or
libellous. Thus the books of Protagoras were by the judges of
Areopagus commanded to be burnt, and himself banished the territory
for a discourse begun with his confessing not to know WHETHER
THERE WERE GODS, OR WHETHER NOT. And against defaming,
it was decreed that none should be traduced by name, as was the
manner of Vetus Comoedia, whereby we may guess how they censured
libelling. And this course was quick enough, as Cicero writes, to quell
both the desperate wits of other atheists, and the open way of defaming,
as the event showed. Of other sects and opinions, though tending to
voluptuousness, and the denying of divine Providence, they took no
heed.
Therefore we do not read that either Epicurus, or that libertine school of
Cyrene, or what the Cynic impudence uttered, was ever questioned by
the laws. Neither is it recorded that the writings of those old comedians
were suppressed, though the acting of them were forbid; and that Plato
commended the reading of Aristophanes, the loosest of them all, to his
royal scholar Dionysius, is commonly known, and may be excused, if
holy Chrysostom, as is reported, nightly studied so much the same
author and had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence into the style
of a rousing sermon.

That other leading city of Greece, Lacedaemon, considering that
Lycurgus their lawgiver was so addicted to elegant learning, as to have
been the first that brought out of Ionia the scattered works of Homer,
and sent the poet Thales from Crete to prepare and mollify the Spartan
surliness with his smooth songs and odes, the better to plant among
them law and civility, it is to be wondered how museless and
unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war. There
needed no licensing of books among them, for they disliked all but
their own laconic apophthegms, and took a slight occasion to chase
Archilochus out of their city, perhaps for composing in a higher strain
than their own soldierly ballads and roundels could reach to. Or if it
were for his broad verses, they were not therein so cautious but they
were as dissolute in their promiscuous conversing; whence Euripides
affirms in Andromache, that their women were all unchaste. Thus much
may give us light after what sort of books were prohibited among the
Greeks.
The Romans also, for many ages trained up only to a military
roughness resembling most the Lacedaemonian guise, knew of learning
little but what their twelve Tables, and the Pontific College with their
augurs and flamens taught them in religion and law; so unacquainted
with other learning, that when Carneades and Critolaus, with the Stoic
Diogenes, coming ambassadors to Rome, took thereby occasion to give
the city a taste of