Page:An English Garner Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (Volume 1 1877).pdf/21

 JOHN MILTON

Books.

[Arenpagitica]

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.

We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men; how we spill that seasoned life of men 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 [ordinary] life; but strikes at that eternal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself; and slays an Immortality rather than a life.