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 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.--J. MILTON. _Areopagitica._