Yasmine Alhiane

John Milton’s Areopagitica: The Freedom to Err

In Areopagitica, John Milton defends the liberty of Englishmen to hold a wide range of

opinions and to write and speak freely by exercising himself, to the amplest degree, these

very liberties before the Lords and Commons. Milton’s speech to Parliament is a mixed bag

of better and worse arguments. As strange as it may seem, Milton has deliberately woven a

few threads of faulty and subtly fallacious reasoning into what is, on the whole, an ingenious

and rousing speech. When the mood strikes him, Milton plays the fool with us, seeking, in

doing so, to defend the individual’s right to err and to persist in his or her own folly in order

that he or she might, in due course, become wise. It is significant that, in Milton’s view,

thinking itself is “an incessant labor to cull out and sort asunder” (728) good seeds (i.e., good

opinions) from bad. The fool can become wise, therefore, only if he or she is permitted to

freely and openly “consult and confer with his judicious friends” (735), for how else might he

appraise whether his own opinions are of any value or not? Wishing to demonstrate before

Parliament how characteristically uneven human reasoning is—prone in the same way to deep

insight and to blind stupidity—Milton holds nothing back, making the “confused seeds” (728)

of his own mind transparent.

The new ordinance prohibiting any book that is “contrary to…the Doctrine and

Discipline of the Church of England” (716) is, in Milton’s opinion, a mechanism for state

repression and “the greatest discouragement and affront that can be offered to learning and

to learned men” (735). He argues most credibly and compellingly against the ordinance by
holding to account the powers that be in England. He reminds Parliament of the extent to

which English institutions have shaped Englishmen. Liberty has taken root in God’s chosen

island and “enfranchised, enlarged, and lifted up [men’s] apprehensions degrees above

themselves” (745). An age of “mild and free and humane government” (745) has fostered in

the hearts and minds of the English people a profound love for liberty. No government in the

world has done more to advance equality, individual liberty, and the rule of law—for England

to revert to the antiquated ways of “popish places[,] where the laity are most hated and

despised” (737) and treated merely as the instruments of state control, is simply

inconceivable: “Ye cannot make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing of

the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders

of our true liberty” (745). Milton wisely counsels England’s leaders that “the great art” of

being a good public servant lies in the ability “to discern in what the law is to bid restraint

and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work” (733). It is not the task of a

statesman to purge from God’s world all that is improper, immoral, or contrary to official

orthodoxy. In fact, those who would suppress the rights of other men to think, judge, and

discern for themselves are would-be tyrants and do-gooders lacking in humility.

Assuming the guise of the fool, Milton seeks to confound the so-called wisdom of

England’s leaders. He throws a wrench into his speech in the form of the slippery slope

fallacy. If the state is to regulate printing, argues Milton (with obvious irony), then, to boot,

“no music [should] be heard… but what is grave and Doric,” dancing should be regulated,

wind and string instruments confiscated, every “municipal fiddler” imprisoned, “household
gluttony” punished, “wanton garb” restricted, taverns closed, alcohol banned, and “mixed

conversation” outlawed (732). Milton pokes fun at bureaucrats who, “affect[ing] a rigor

contrary to the manner of God” (733), would seek to create a morally pure and perfect

society by “removing the matter of sin” (733). The Almighty, “who created passions within

us, [and] pleasures round about us,” places inordinate trust in man, for “when [He] gave

[man] reason, [He] gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing” (733). England’s

neurotic leaders, on the other hand, appear to place more trust in “Utopian polities” (732)

than in themselves and in other men. Have they so little faith that God’s Truth will triumph

over evil and falsehood that they “fear each book and the shaking of every leaf, before [they]

know what the contents are” (738)?

Milton believes that, ultimately, “[a]ll opinions, yea errors, known, read, and collated,

are of main service and assistance toward the speedy attainment of what is truest” (727). In

most of our deliberations and utterances, good and bad reasoning are, like the knowledge of

good and evil, deeply “involved and interwoven” (728). By interweaving strong and weak

arguments together into one stirring speech, Milton’s aim is simply to let the art of

persuasion—its power, scope, and the dignity and respect that it affords all thinking persons—

stand in marked contrast with an arbitrary and stupid piece of legislation. Milton invites his

Parliamentary audience, who, presumably, believe themselves to be “skillful considerers of

human things” (733), to embrace that which is true and good and to reject that which is

repugnant to reason or moral sense. Whereas liberty is “the nurse of all great wits” (745),

the new ordinance would bring back the mental fetters of a bygone era, locking Englishmen
once again into state-imposed immaturity and “gross conforming stupidity” (747). Milton’s

ability to face Parliament in the guise of a fool is anything but foolish. It reveals his skill,

cunning, and, ironically, his seriousness of purpose.

 Works Cited

Milton, John. Areopagitica. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. Merritt Y. Hughes.
Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 1957. Print. 717-749.