Summary (Part Three, value of free speech)
In the final section of “Areopagitica,” Milton mounts his most sweeping argument of all. After articulating that history proves that censorship laws are a feature of tyrannical and corrupt societies, and arguing that such laws are inherently ineffectual, he shifts to testifying to the positive value of free speech, a point he has touched on throughout the essay. As he writes, he shifts from merely arguing that censorship laws can do no good, to arguing that they actively harm society.
First, he professes the value and nobility of those who love learning for its own sake, emphasizing that such men are not only members of the clergy, but all throughout society. He states that it would be insulting to these men to allow them to finish school, only to immediately install them beneath the oversight of a licensor. How condescending, for learned men to engage with complex ideas only with the permission of a government official.
The existence of the licensor is especially insulting to authors. Authors are experts in their own material, and their books are the result of hours of research, thought, and labour. By being forced to confer with a licensor, all that expertise is discounted. The author is treated with mistrust and suspicion, and subjected to judgment by a man who may be younger than him, inexperienced in writing, and less intelligent. Even if the author is not insulted by having to defer to such a man, he is certainly forced to present himself in public as someone under the supervision of another, rather than an independent authority. Milton also mentions how inconvenient this would be for authors who wish to make edits to their writing.
Not only would licensing do damage to authors, it would also undermine the practice of teaching. Instructors would be stripped of their authority and made pupils themselves under the supervision of a state which sought to tell them what to say. If the state makes a mistake in the choice of licensor, then the students must be subjected to teaching by men ruled by that poor licensor—they cannot judge a teacher on his own merit, or seek out a more authoritative instructor.
Indeed, Milton argues, the existence of censorship would be an insult to the whole nation of England. It would transform knowledge into a limited commodity, controlled by the state and bought and sold by a few powerful licensors, rather than the free right of all the people. The law treats the common people as “a giddy, vicious, and ungrounded people; in such a sick and weak state of faith and discretion, as to be able to take nothing down but through the pipe of a licensor.” He argues that this hatred of ordinary people is a feature of “Popish,” or Catholic governments, not free England.
Finally, censorship would be an insult to members of the clergy, because it suggests that they are incapable of tending their own congregation and leading them away from dangerous ideas. We already trust ministers to dissuade their congregations from dangerous ideas spread by other people, and must also trust them to disprove dangerous ideas in books.
Milton then emphasizes that this is not merely a possibility, but rather the reality he has seen in his travels in Europe, where strict censorship is the law. He writes that he encountered many intellectuals who envied English freedom of speech, even though at that point the country was not truly free. He writes that censorship in these countries has stunted intellectual culture, as everyone is too afraid to try out new ideas. For the Parliament to institute the same laws would make it merely the same Catholic system under a new name, rather than the beginning of a new kind of state.
Yes, Milton acknowledges, the end of censorship will mean more religious disagreement. However, conformity is not necessarily a good thing. If people believe the right ideas for the wrong reasons, such as because they feel they have no other choice, they are still in a state of heresy. There will always be people who would rather not take responsibility for their own religion, and want to pawn it off on someone with authority. Censorship will encourage those people to practice only a shallow form of Christianity, adhering to its rules when they have to, but leaving it at the door when they do what they really care about—making money. Similarly, there are those who thrive in conformity and obedience, preferring never to think for themselves, who will enjoy censorship.
There will also be ministers who enjoy the lack of responsibility, using censorship as an excuse to adopt what’s told to them without thinking for themselves. Yet true diligence requires them to really believe what they teach, and to have the tools to defend their arguments against wrong ideas. Thus, the best option is to build a society where the common people are treated with respect, and where we trust that when bad ideas are published in the public space, they will also be refuted publicly by others who care about truth.
Here, Milton comes to the crux of his argument: that censorship will harm England more than any foreign attack, by hindering “the importation of our richest merchandise, truth.” For as Milton writes, in this world, truth is not obvious, but scattered across the world. The friends of truth must seek it out and work to reunite it into a single clear body. Those who lament Christianity’s fracturing into many sects are mistaken, and in fact the enemies of true unity, because it is in division and disagreement that truth will be discovered and finally unified.
It was England’s glory to be the birthplace of Protestantism, where such truth-seeking could be possible. After centuries of darkness, English people are finally regaining their intellectual identity, and working towards the creation of a better church. He makes London the center of this movement, a place where knowledge is sought. Of course, where there is a desire to learn, “there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions.” That’s how people will build truth. Only jealous men are upset to see the younger generation testing out new ideas and exercising their curiosity.
From here, Milton lists his reasons for feeling hopeful about the many sects and schisms in contemporary English society. First, the fact that while London has been under siege, its people have been thinking about a new religion, shows the goodness of the Parliament and the virtue of the people. Second, it points to the eventual victory of the Parliamentarians, because it shows an energetic nation shaking off the shackles of corruption. For the Parliament to repress this bright new world, they would themselves have to regress, becoming “oppressive, arbitrary, and tyrannous” as their predecessors were, and compromising their best hope of victory.
Instead, he advises, they must allow truth and falsehood to struggle with each other, and trust that truth will come out the victor. After all, when truth is set free, it has all the strength of God. He advises that truth takes many forms, and to expect it to look like conformity is to act like the old government. He stresses that there will never be a society where everyone agrees, and that we should strive for a “unity of spirit” and a “bond of peace” rather than complete conformity. In such an intellectually diverse society, truth could emerge from anywhere.
At the end of the speech, Milton writes that, should the government embrace repression, “it would be no unequal distribution in the first place to suppress the suppressors themselves”—in other words, to once again revolt and force a more tolerant government. He argues that the policy of declaring books illegitimate is itself illegitimate, and it is that law that should be repressed by the state, rather than the books it targets. He suggests that Parliament has been defrauded by bad actors in adapting the policy of censorship, but that Parliament's true virtue will be shown when it admits its mistake and reverse the law.
Analysis
The final section of “Areopagitica” is the most sweeping, and the most radical. The first two sections were grounded in practical facts based on Milton’s observations and reasoning: corrupt societies have censored while free ones have not, and censorship laws are inherently ineffectual. The final section, in contrast, is more ideological: it’s about the kind of society Milton wants, not just the pitfalls he wants Parliament to avoid.
At its center is a wholehearted embrace of religious pluralism. Prior to the Protestant Reformation, most Europeans were Christians, and that Christianity, at least theoretically, was all the same faith. In reality, of course, practices and beliefs differed, but unity was the policy. After the Reformation, when Protestants broke off from the church, it was suddenly the norm for there to be many different possible faiths.
That doesn’t mean, however, that people were necessarily tolerant of all those religions. Many sects taught that their faith and only their faith guaranteed salvation. People were left with an impossibly serious choice: pick the wrong religion, and end up damned. It’s no surprise that many people were stressed out by all the disagreement, and sought a future where their sect and only their sect would dominate society. At best, disagreement was an undesirable, temporary stage that allowed society to escape Catholicism, but should be pushed aside as soon as possible in favor of a new Protestant unity.
Milton, however, suggests something different. For him, those who lament the division of society are jealous fools who fail to see the value of disagreement in society. That value is twofold. First, he suggests that Truth does not yet exist in a single unified form. It is like a body that has been divided into thousands of pieces and scattered around the world: only when the pieces have been gathered up and reassembled will the body be complete again. Disagreement is part of the process for finding that divided truth.
Milton here is drawing on a conventional narrative about the second coming in early modern Christianity. When Jesus came again, Christians believed, everyone who had ever lived would be resurrected in body as well as in spirit, and then Christ would judge them and determine who would go to heaven, and who would be damned. Even bodies that had been torn up and scattered would be brought together, while the body of the church would be similarly unified. Milton is suggesting that something similar is happening with truth, as division in the present will eventually lead to a new unity.
That part of the argument still presents division as something temporary. Milton’s other argument more firmly positions disagreement as actively desirable. He writes that Truth is strong, but that it takes many forms. There isn’t one true sect and many false ones, or even many sects with only part of the truth: it’s possible that multiple, disagreeing sects might be simultaneously true. This is a radical argument for pluralism as not just a stepping stone, but a desirable social state that allows truth to prosper.
