传播学经典导读教材-1《论出版自由》讲解.docVIP

Areopagitica（古希腊山名）：A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing(出版自由) John Milton I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment（关注） in the church and Commonwealth（联邦）, to have a vigilant（警惕的） eye how books demean（贬低） themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on（制裁） them as malefactors（罪犯）. For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life（生命的潜力） in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny(子女、后代) they are; nay（不仅如此）, they do preserve as in a vial（小玻璃瓶） the purest efficacy（效力） 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（撒播） up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness（谨慎） 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（大师、名家） spirit, embalmed（熏制） and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. T’is true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft（经常） recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare（=get along） the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide(杀人) may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom（殉道）, and if it is extend to the whole impression（印刷界）, a kind of massacre（屠杀）; whereof the execution ends not in the slaying （杀死）of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal（精英） and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a life… …… For books are so meats and viand