Aeropagitica:
Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when he ascended, and his Apostles after Him were laid asleep, then strait arose a wicked race of deceivers, who as that story goes of the Ægyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewd her lovely form into a thousand peeces, and scatter’d them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the carefull search that Isis made for the mangl’d body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall doe, till her Masters second comming; he shall bring together every joynt and member, and shall mould them into an immortall feature of lovelines and perfection.
Good and evill we know in the field of this World grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involv’d and interwoven with the knowledge of evill, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discern’d, that those confused seeds which were impos’d on Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more intermixt. It was from out the rinde of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evill as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evill, that is to say of knowing good by evill. As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdome can there be to choose, what continence to forbeare without the knowledge of evill? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister’d vertue, unexercis’d & unbreath’d, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immmortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.
Consider the following scenario: A local government is debating whether to pass laws that would mandate certain moral behaviors and prohibit others. For example, they’re considering a law that would require citizens face criminal penalties for lying in personal relationships and that mandates attending religious services four times a month.
Reflect on these questions: Should governments legislate morality beyond preventing direct harm to others? What are the practical and philosophical implications of using laws to enforce moral behavior? Consider historical examples where moral legislation has been attempted, and examine both the intended and unintended consequences.
In your response, you might want to explore:
- The distinction between personal and public morality
- The relationship between law and moral development
- Whether legally enforced virtue is truly virtuous
- Practical challenges in defining and enforcing moral laws
- The balance between individual freedom and collective good
From Thomas Lux:
Have you ever tried to read “Lycidas”?
No wonder Robert Lowell, manic
as a buzz saw, tried to rewrite it!
It’s a hard haul through our early tongue
and there are at least 17 references/allusions
in each of its 193 lines.
I read it all morning and I read it all night.
The next day all day
and 100 miles into the dark.
I still understand little,
and care little about his quarrel with the clergy;
though I am sorry for the loss of his friend
Edward King, drowned in the Irish Sea.
But there is a symphony
in my garden now, the air is a symphony all around me,
the river, the trees,
there is a symphony
in blind, blind Milton’s poem
in my hands! Oh,
I’m on a little train
cresting a hill and my engine
is a symphony and also its smoke.
Tom Lux, The Cradle Place, 2012
Paradise Lost in Popular Culture
Dr. Samuel Johnson on “Lycidas”:
It is not to be considered as the effusion of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of “rough satyrs and fauns with cloven heel.” Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief.
In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting: whatever images it can supply are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind. (1779)
Is this the seat our conqueror has given?
And this the climate we must change for heaven?
These regions and this realm my wars have got;
This mournful empire is the loser’s lot;
In liquid burnings, or on dry, to dwell,
Is all the sad variety of hell.
“Ay, you may tag my verses if you will.” (Milton to Dryden)
IMMOTA, TRIVMPHANS — ‘Unmoved, Triumphant’ (scroll around the rock);
Clarior é tenebris — ‘Brighter through the darkness’ (beam from the clouds);
CRESCIT SUB PONDERE VIRTVS — ‘Virtue grows beneath weights’ (scroll around the tree);
Beatam & Æternam — ‘Blessed and Eternal’ (around the heavenly crown marked GLORIA (Glory); meant to be contrasted with:
Splendidam & Gravem — ‘Splendid and Heavy’ (around the Crown of England, removed from the King’s head and lying on the ground), with the motto Vanitas (Vanity); and
Asperam & Levem — ‘Bitter and Light’, the martyr’s crown of thorns held by Charles; contains the motto Gratia (Grace);
Coeli Specto — ‘I look to Heaven’;
IN VERBO TVO SPES MEA — ‘In Thy Word is My Hope’;
Christi Tracto — ‘I entreat Christ’ or ‘By the word of Christ’;
Mundi Calco — ‘I tread on the world’.
Eikon Basilike, published February 9, 1649 (10 days after Charles I was beheaded)
Third edition in Folger Shakespeare Library
Originally attributed to Charles I, but, according to Madan (p. 125-33), written by John Gauden, who probably included some authentic writings of the King.
A Room of One’s Own, Jefferson’s MonticelloA Room of One’s Own, Jefferson’s Monticello
1823 June 5. (Virginia Jefferson Randolph Trist to Nicholas Philip Trist). “I have never told you of the nice little cuddy that has become my haunt, and from which I am now writing. Do you recollect the place over the parlour’s Portico into which the dome room opened? Since the columns to the portico have been completed, Grand-Papa has had the great work bench removed from it, and a floor layed. Corneilia’s ingenuity in conjunction with mine formed steps from the dome into this little closet with a pile of boxes, and having furnished this apartment with a sopha to lounge upon, though alas! without cushions, a high and low chair and two small tables, one for my writing desk, the other for my books; and breathing through a broken pane of glass and some wide cracks in the floor; I have taken possession with the dirt daubers, wasps and humble bees; and do not intend to give it up to any thing but the formidable rats which have not yet found out this fairy palace.”
That mans Soul, it seems to me, was distended as wide as Creation. His powr over the human mind was absolute and unlimited. His Genius was great beyond Conception, and his Learning without Bounds. I can only gaze at him with astonishment, without comprehending the vast Compass of his Capacity. (John Adams, Diary 1: 23)
Satan’s words “have a long grand sound [. . .] which makes the whole fram of both Reader and Hearer thril with Transport.” [Rebel angels brandishing swords]: “alarms, rouses, astonishes” the mind. Nevertheless, Adams realizes that “The general sentiment is that of Rebellion and Warfare, proclaimed by all the infernal Host against the Almighty, which is a sentiment that cant fail to excite Horror.”
Can one read, without shuddering, this wild reverie of the divine, immortal Milton? [. . .] What! a single assembly govern England? an assembly of senators for life too? What! did Milton’s ideas of liberty and free government extend no further than exchanging one house of lords for another, and making it supreme and perpetual? [. . .] John Milton was as honest a man as his nation ever bred, and as great a friend of liberty; but his greatness most certainly did not consist in knowledge of the nature of man and of government, if we are to judge from this performance. (Works 4: 465-66; qtd. in Patterson 281)
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929)
My belief is that if we live another century or so — I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals — and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down.
Lady Mary Chudleigh, 1699:
Woman’s being created last will not be a very great argument to debase the dignity of the female sex. If some of the men own this … ‘tis more likely to be true. The great Milton, a grave author, brings in Adam thus speaking to Eve in Paradise Lost, ‘Oh, fairest of creation, last and best of all God’s works.’
Mary Astell, 1700:
Patience and submission are the only comforts that are left to a poor people who groan under tyranny unless they are strong enough to break the yoke. Not Milton himself would cry up liberty to poor female slaves or plead for the lawfulness or resisting a private tyranny.
