I know they are as lively,
and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons' teeth;
and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.
"And yet on the other hand, unless wariness 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-spirit; embalmed and treasured up
on purpose to a life beyond life.
"'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there is
no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss
of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the
worse.
"We should be wary, therefore, what persecutions we raise against
the living labours of public men; how we spill that seasoned life
of man preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of
homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and, if it
extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the
execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but
strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason
itself; slays an immortality rather than a life.
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