prose 12
from Areopagitica
(About building on past knowledge) The Light which we have gain'd was giv'n us not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge.
(About effects of censorship) Last, that censorship 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 matters.
(About a possible censor) It cannot be deny'd but that he who is made judge to sit upon the birth, or death of books whether they may be wafted into the world or not, had need to be a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious; there may be else (i.e. otherwise) no mean mistakes in the censure of what is passable or not; which is also no mean injury. And if he be of such worth as behoves him, there cannot be a more tedious and unpleasing Journey-work, a greater loss of time levied upon his head than to be made the perpetual reader of unchosen books and pamphlets, oft times huge volumes.
(About the conscientious writer) When a man writes to the World, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends; after all which done he takes himself to be inform'd in what he writes, as well (as) any that writ before him.
(A few sentences from "Areopagitica, A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing", (1644), John Milton's great call for freedom of speech, occasioned by the government's attempt to censor some of his own writings. Like his poetry the writing is dense with so many subsidiary clauses it almost becomes a game of 'hunt the main verb'. But if you persist the logic is overwhelming; and you can see how this unlawfully printed text became the irrefutable basis for the freedom we now take for granted. The speech was "addressed to the English parliament", the rough equivalent of the Athenian Areopagus, a hill where the elders met, hence its title)