For this is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth—that let no man in this world expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.
The vision of “Areopagitica” is profoundly optimistic, and yet not utopian. Milton isn’t imagining a perfect society, and he emphasizes that such a society is impossible. Yet rather than resigning himself to the world as it is, he says: given the inevitable flaws of statehood, what can we do to ensure the best government possible? One of his fundamental arguments in favor of free speech is that, because there will always be problems, it’s crucial to have a government that can hear and respond to complaints. Cleverly, he positions his own complaint against government censorship as just such an intervention. In writing “Areopagitica,” Milton himself participates in building the better world for which he is advocating.
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 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.
One of the most beautiful and surprising passages in “Areopagitica” testifies to the personhood of books. Milton personifies books in the first sentence of the paragraph, when he writes “books demean themselves as well as men.” We might be surprised by this sentiment in an essay defending free speech: after all, here Milton agrees that books can present a problem for society. Similarly, later in the paragraph, he writes, “I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth.” He’s alluding to ancient Greek myth, which describes how dragon’s teeth, when planted in the ground, grow into warriors. Milton, then, suggests that books similarly may appear like mere objects, but can actually come alive and act on the world. Milton’s admission that books can be dangerous also distinguishes books from all other objects. He goes on to describe them as akin to a person: “as good almost kill a man as kill a good book.” Ultimately, he’s arguing that books should be treated with the same deference we extend to other people, thus admitting to the power of books while also describing them as worthy of protection.
Sometimes five Imprimaturs are seen together dialogue-wise in the piazza of one title-page, complimenting and ducking each to other with their shaven reverences, whether the author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot of his epistle, shall to the press or to the sponge.
One aspect of “Areopagitica” we might struggle to understand from a contemporary perspective is the antipathy between Protestants and Catholics in early modern England. In the early sixteenth century, the British church split from the larger Catholic church, becoming its own separate institution. In the years that followed, there was a massive social and political reaction against Catholicism, including widespread destruction of Catholic devotional objects, the banning of many traditional Catholic religious practices, and the seizure of Church lands by the English monarchy. A century later, the tension remained, and it underwrites this passage from “Areopagitica.” Milton is calling up a stereotype of drunken and greedy monks—we can see this in the reference to “their shaven reverences,” or the traditionally bald tops of monks’ heads. The Catholic Church’s censorship system relied on monks to inspect each book. Milton wants his reader to respond to the image of monks clustered around a book with visceral distaste, and to extend that distaste to English censorship laws.
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 kinds 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.
As part of his argument for the value of reading, Milton alludes to a vision reported by the early Christian Eusebius, who became concerned that he was making a mistake by learning how to argue against heresy by reading heretical books. God appeared to him and advised him to “read any books whatever come to thy hands.” As Milton reports here, Eusebius was quicker to accept the vision as genuine because it aligned with Paul’s defense of knowledge in the Bible. Milton defends this claim through a simile comparing books to food, claiming that for the wise man, neither poisonous food nor evil books can hurt him, because God protects him. Crucially, however, there is a value in consuming dangerous books that cannot be found in poisonous food. When it comes to bad food, the best you can hope is not to get sick. However, when a good man reads bad books, he can actively benefit. He can use them to discover what kinds of evil exist in the world, to “confute” or argue with heresy, to warn people about dangers in their midst, and to show the reality of various social ills.
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.
The idea that one can become a better person by engaging with evil ideas is central to Milton’s argument in “Areopagitica.” Here, he strengthens that argument with two allusions. First, he references the legend of Psyche, a character from Greek mythology. Psyche fell in love with Cupid, the son of the love goddess Venus. Venus told Psyche that she could only win the right to marry Cupid if she completed a series of seemingly impossible tasks, one of which was to sort an enormous pile of corn, barley, and poppy seeds into separate piles before morning. Milton uses the comparison to speak to the similar impossibility of sorting out good and evil ideas. Then, he shifts to Christian mythology (what he would have understood as history)—mankind’s original sin in the Garden of Eden. In the Christian creation story, Adam and Eve taste the fruit from the “tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Here, Milton calls attention to an unusual detail: the same fruit provided knowledge of both good and evil. Indeed, he suggests, that’s part of what changed when mankind sinned. Suddenly, good and evil weren’t fully distinct phenomena, but inextricably entangled, mixed together like the seeds in Psyche’s pile. Now people who want to learn about virtue must do the meticulous work of sorting for themselves.
If every action, which is good or evil in man at ripe years, were to be under pittance and prescription and compulsion, what were virtue but a name, what praise could be then due to well-doing, what gramercy to be sober, just, or continent? Many there be that complain of divine Providence for suffering Adam to transgress; foolish tongues! When God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions. We ourselves esteem not of that obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force: God therefore left him free, set before him a provoking object, ever almost in his eyes; herein consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of his abstinence. Wherefore did he create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue?
Milton’s politics can feel very contemporary. Modern democracies tend to share Milton’s praise for tolerance, ideological pluralism, and free speech. It’s important to remember, however, that Milton comes from a fundamentally religious perspective. His tolerance is political—he believes the state should allow a wide range of ideas. However, he supports that tolerance only because he believes people will become more virtuous by having the freedom to ultimately reject “dangerous” ideas which go against his own religious convictions. In this sense, he is not really tolerant on a personal level. For example, he does not believe people should engage with heretical ideas in good faith and open themselves up to being convinced: rather, they should see them as temptations to resist and argue against.
And what if the author shall be one so copious of fancy, as to have many things well worth the adding come into his mind after licensing, while the book is yet under the press, which not seldom happens to the best and diligentest writers; and that perhaps a dozen times in one book? The printer dares not go beyond his licensed copy; so often then must the author trudge to his leave-giver, that those his new insertions may be viewed; and many a jaunt will be made, ere that licenser, for it must be the same man, can either be found, or found at leisure; meanwhile either the press must stand still, which is no small damage, or the author lose his accuratest thoughts, and send the book forth worse than he had made it, which to a diligent writer is the greatest melancholy and vexation that can befall.
Milton is best known as the author of the epic religious poem Paradise Lost. In this quote, we get a sense of his process as a writer. From surviving drafts, we know Milton was an exacting editor. Early modern printing lacked the clear oversight and chain of command in modern publishing. Many authors didn’t really exercise much say in how their work was presented to the public. Milton, however, demanded control, offering extensive feedback on proofs (or early drafts) and issuing corrections throughout the publishing process. Here, he argues that censorship would inhibit the editorial process, because the author would need to seek permission for each change. Although he writes in general terms, he’s certainly thinking of his own process. We thus see how Milton’s artistic concerns informed his political interests: he clearly felt that censorship would negatively impact the aesthetic quality of his own poetry.
Truth and understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and licence it like our broadcloth and our wool-packs.
In Milton’s time, the capitalist, money-based economy was still relatively new, and his argument registers some discomfort with the money economy. In this period, Britain was a major center for textile production. There was a lot of sheep farming, and that wool could then be processed into cloth, which was sold to the continent. As wool merchants and cloth manufacturers amassed political power, they created systems of licensing and marking to control the market, which Milton references here. He expresses anxiety that censorship will similarly “monopolize” truth, or put it under the control of a small circle of powerful individuals. Elsewhere in the essay, he speculates that the only people who will agree to the arduous task of censorship will end up being motivated only by money. Milton worries about the money economy infecting the purer world of truth and knowledge, suggesting that he still sees it with some skepticism. Yet his opposition to the royalists was also a tacit endorsement of the new capitalist economy. Given his politics, we can see Milton here not as condemning trade, but rather as fighting for a place for truth in a money economy.
Behold now this vast city: a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks; had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already.
Generally, “Areopagitica” is light on imagery, and more focused on developing an intellectual argument. Here, however, Milton gives us a dense picture of London, as well as England more broadly. During the Civil War, London was a holdout for Parliament that the royalists could not overtake. Milton portrays it as a vast, energetic place defined by the people who populate it. He sees through the city’s physical architecture to the activities of its residents, emphasizing and celebrating first the army, busy making armaments for the battle against the royalists, and then the intellectual community, both readers and writers, working to build a future free of the monarchy. Though his vision is broad, we still see the individual scholars, “pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps.” The specific image draws the reader into Milton’s version of London, encouraging them to feel like a part of a community of vibrant and brilliant individuals.
For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power. Give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, for then she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did, who spake oracles only when he was caught and bound, but then rather she turns herself into all shapes, except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, until she be adjured into her own likeness. Yet is it not impossible that she may have more shapes than one. What else is all that rank of things indifferent, wherein Truth may be on this side or on the other, without being unlike herself? What but a vain shadow else is the abolition of those ordinances, that hand-writing nailed to the cross? What great purchase is this Christian liberty which Paul so often boasts of?
Some of Milton’s most stirring language comes when he speaks of the power of Truth. He personifies Truth as a woman, and strengthens his characterization of her through several allusions. First, he refers to Proteus, a minor god in Greek mythology who could change into any shape unless he was restrained. Milton argues that Truth works the opposite way: she is only herself when she is not subjected to restraint. Then he refers to Micaiah, an Old Testament prophet who lied to the king on God’s instruction, in order to ensure his death. Both of these images associate truth with divinity, and stress that even divinely informed truth can be difficult to distinguish from falsehood. Indeed, for Milton that mutability is part of Truth’s power: if she could only take one form, that too would be a kind of restriction. Yet the powerful Truth of “Areopagitica” bows to no man’s rules. Instead, Milton wants Truth to be able to freely exercise power in society. He trusts that once that’s the case, Truth will prevail, no matter how many falsehoods enter the discourse.
With good and Religious Reason therefore all Protestant Churches with one consent, and particularly the Church of England in Her thirty nine Articles, Artic. 6th, 19th, 20th, 21st, and elsewhere, maintain these two points, as the main Principles of true Religion: that the Rule of true Religion is the Word of God only: and that their Faith ought not to be an implicit faith, that is, to believe, though as the Church believes, against or without express authority of Scripture. And if all Protestants as universally as they hold these two Principles, so attentively and Religiously would observe them, they would avoid and cut off many Debates and Contentions, Schisms and Persecutions, which too oft have been among them, and more firmly unite against the common adversary.
Milton’s entire argument in “Of True Religion” grows out of this paragraph. Here, he asserts that the essence of Protestant belief is simple: true religion is based exclusively on the word of God, and no beliefs should exist without the express authority of scripture. In other words, you should believe everything the Bible says, and nothing it doesn’t. Milton calls believing things the Bible doesn’t state “implicit belief,” one of his primary accusations directed against the Catholic Church.
There is no man so wicked, but at sometimes his conscience, will wring him with thoughts of another world, & the Peril of his soul: the trouble and melancholy which he conceives of true Repentance and amendment he endures not; but inclines rather to some carnal Superstition, which may pacify and lull his Conscience with some more pleasing Doctrine. None more ready and officious to offer her self then the Romish, and opens wide her Office, with all her faculties to receive him; easy Confession, easy Absolution, Pardons, Indulgences, Masses for him both quick and dead, Agnus Dei's, Relics, and the like: and he, instead of Working out his salvation with fear and trembling, strait thinks in his heart (like another kind of fool then he in the Psalms) to bribe God as a corrupt judge; and by his Proctor, some Priest or Fryer, to buy out his Peace with money, which he cannot with his repentance.
Here, Milton references numerous aspects of Catholic practice relating to forgiveness, while providing an insightful account of human psychology. He argues that when people sin, they do not do so entirely without guilt, but rather crave some form of forgiveness. Catholicism offers a rich array of options for those people. In confession, a member of the congregation reports their sins to a priest, who forgives them on God’s behalf. During Milton’s time, the church also sold indulgences: in exchange for the completion of a sacred task, or money, a priest would promise to shorten one’s time in purgatory (a realm of the afterlife dedicated to purifying sinners). Catholics also held masses in the name of both the “quick,” or the living, as well as those who had already died, again entreating God for forgiveness. Puritans saw all these practices as attempts to buy off God. In recent years, historians more sympathetic to Catholicism have interpreted them as strategies for strengthening the faith community.
No man, who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny, that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself, and Were, by privilege above all the creatures, born to command, and not to obey: and that they lived so, till from the root of Adam's transgression, falling among themselves to do wrong and violence, and foreseeing that such courses must needs tend to the destruction of them all, they agreed by common league to bind each other from mutual injury, and jointly to defend themselves against any that gave disturbance or opposition to such agreement.
In this quotation from “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,” Milton defines mankind as naturally free based on the Christian story of creation. In the Bible, God creates man “in his own image,” or based on himself. This is what makes human beings different from all the other animals. The resemblance is both physical and intellectual. Human beings, like God, are meant to rule over the world, rather than be ruled by it. They are initially placed in a paradise, the Garden of Eden, but when Adam and Eve disobey God by tasting fruit from the tree of knowledge, they are expelled into the world. Milton stresses that the expulsion from Eden doesn’t mean human beings lose their natural freedom. They are still made in the image of God, and they are still born free like him. However, the expulsion from Eden does mean that human beings have to deal with violence and sin. In order to maintain the peace and defend themselves, they used their collective power to select a leader, tasked with exercising justice. Milton’s version of mankind’s early history works to denaturalize the monarchy—to make it seem like something that came about at a certain point in history, rather than something that has always existed. By making the monarchy less natural, Milton makes it seem possible that ordinary people might get rid of the king.
Last of all, to those whose mind still is to maintain textual restrictions, wherof the bare sound cannot consist sometimes with humanity, much less with charity, I would ever answer by putting them in remembrance of a command above all commands, which they seem to have forgot, and who spake it; in comparison wherof this which they so exalt, is but a petty and subordinate precept. Let them go therefore with whom I am loath to couple them, yet they will needs run into the same blindness with the Pharisees, let them go therefore and consider well what this lesson means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice; for on that saying all the Law and Prophets depend, much more the Gospel whose end and excellence is mercy and peace: Or if they cannot learn that, how will they hear this, which yet I shall not doubt to leave with them as a conclusion: That God the Son hath put all other things under his own feet; but his Commandments he hath left all under the feet of charity.
In the second half of “The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,” Milton attempts to prove that Christ’s prohibition of divorce should be disregarded. The argument is difficult for him to defend, because the Biblical quotation is so clear. He points to a number of trivial features of the language to attempt to argue that it doesn’t say what it seems to say. However, here, in the final paragraph of the essay, he seems to dismiss all that analysis. Instead, he suggests that people should not be governed by “textual restrictions,” which are sometimes at odds with charity and humanity. Milton then directs those who must be governed by such a limiting moral code to another quote from the Bible, when Christ said “I will have mercy.” The simple and beautiful pronouncement overrides the prohibition of divorce, and even all the complicated and unconvincing arguments Milton has made.
That indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature, unchangeable, hindering and ever likely to hinder the main benefits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce than natural frigidity, especially if there be no children, and that there be mutual consent.
This quotation articulates the central proposition of “The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.” Milton argues that “unfitness” of mind should be taken more seriously as a cause for divorce than “natural frigidity.” By natural frigidity, he means a failure to have sex, which at the time was one of the only reasons that a marriage could be ended. Even in this straightforward proposition of his theme, Milton distinguishes between the mind and the body. He begins with the mind, arguing that “the main benefits of conjugal society,” or living with another person, are mental, namely solace (comfort) and peace. However, the law only provides for the less important needs of the body, by allowing divorce in the case of unconsummated marriages. Milton seeks to remedy this problem.
