[Milton-L] Areopagitica in the NYPL

[James Rovira]

To me, throughout much of the A. and in the passage quoted Milton
works the following string of associations:

book=
blood=
life=
spirit=
human rational capacity

The human rational capacity is embodied in words and subdivided into:
-dynamic, that of living human beings
-static, in fixed form, as in books. As a result, books are "embalmed."

so as Nancy said, we'd come full circle like this:

human rational capacity=
books.

So what you do to a book you do to a person, as books are a form of
what people are, an embodiment of the human rational capacity.  It's
just a static embodiment rather than a dynamic one.

Jim R