A Little History

"As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature...but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself...."

I slogged through Paradise Lost in high school, not fully appreciating that John Milton was a highly complex man living in tumultuous times. There was an excellent article in the New Yorker recently about his life and work, this being the 400th anniversary of his birth. As you know, free speech has a long history in western democratic culture, and the Founding Fathers, as proper gentlemen of the day, were solidly grounded in classical studies. Milton's Areopagitica is a cornerstone document in the development of the first amendment. Interestingly, although he titled it a speech, it was actually a widely distributed pamphlet, and never delivered orally before Parliament. Not light reading, by any means, but worth the time, the document was in part inspired by Milton's visit to the aging Galileo as well as by the ongoing upheavals in England between Catholicism and Protestantism.