[A]s 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. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica
I read this as part of a reading for class on censorship. It was written near the time of the invention of the printing press. I agree with this quote except that I am not quite sure about the killing the image of God part. What do you think?
In books I think we try to project our ideas about God and ethics into the literature, so in that perspective, books are our image of God.
ReplyDeleteMan was made in God's image, so to kill a person is to kill an image of God. But when a good man (and remember the importance of rhetoric in those days) writes down his reasoning for or against an issue and those thoughts are destroyed, the image of God, the gift of reason, is set at naught and cast aside. Milton thought highly of man's ability to reason, and as such saw the censorship of another's work as an affront to God's gift.
ReplyDelete