Gulliver's Travels

he author’s great love of his native country. His master’s
observations upon the constitution and administration of England, as
described by the author, with parallel cases and comparisons. His
master’s observations upon human nature.

The reader may be disposed to wonder how I could prevail on myself to
give so free a representation of my own species, among a race of
mortals who are already too apt to conceive the vilest opinion of
humankind, from that entire congruity between me and their Yahoos.
But I must freely confess, that the many virtues of those excellent
quadrupeds, placed in opposite view to human corruptions, had so far
opened my eyes and enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the
actions and passions of man in a very different light, and to think the
honour of my own kind not worth managing; which, besides, it was
impossible for me to do, before a person of so acute a judgment as my
master, who daily convinced me of a thousand faults in myself, whereof
I had not the least perception before, and which, with us, would never
be numbered even among human infirmities. I had likewise learned, from
his example, an utter detestation of all falsehood or disguise; and
truth appeared so amiable to me, that I determined upon sacrificing
every thing to it.

Let me deal so candidly with the reader as to confess that there was
yet a much stronger motive for the freedom I took in my representation
of things. I had not yet been a year in this country before I
contracted such a love and veneration for the inhabitants, that I
entered on a firm resolution never to return to humankind, but to pass
the rest of my life among these admirable Houyhnhnms, in the
contemplation and practice of every virtue, where I could have no
example or incitement to vice. But it was decreed by fortune, my
perpetual enemy, that so great a felicity should not fall to my share.
However, it is now some comfort to reflect, that in what I said of my
countrymen, I extenuated their faults as much as I durst before so
strict an examiner; and upon every article gave as favourable a turn as
the matter would bear. For, indeed, who is there alive that will not be
swayed by his bias and partiality to the place of his birth?

I have related the substance of several conversations I had with my
master during the greatest part of the time I had the honour to be in
his service; but have, indeed, for brevity sake, omitted much more than
is here set down.

When I had answered all his questions, and his curiosity seemed to be
fully satisfied, he sent for me one morning early, and commanded me to
sit down at some distance (an honour which he had never before
conferred upon me). He said, “he had been very seriously considering my
whole story, as far as it related both to myself and my country; that
he looked upon us as a sort of animals, to whose share, by what
accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of reason had
fallen, whereof we made no other use, than by its assistance, to
aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones, which
nature had not given us; that we disarmed ourselves of the few
abilities she had bestowed; had been very successful in multiplying our
original wants, and seemed to spend our whole lives in vain endeavours
to supply them by our own inventions; that, as to myself, it was
manifest I had neither the strength nor agility of a common Yahoo;
that I walked infirmly on my hinder feet; had found out a contrivance
to make my claws of no use or defence, and to remove the hair from my
chin, which was intended as a shelter from the sun and the weather:
lastly, that I could neither run with speed, nor climb trees like my
brethren,” as he called them, “the Yahoos in his country.

“That our institutions of government and law were plainly owing to our
gross defects in reason, and by consequence in virtue; because reason
alone is sufficient to govern a rational creature; which was,
therefore, a character we had no pretence to challenge, even from the
account I had given of my own people; although he manifestly perceived,
that, in order to favour them, I had concealed many particulars, and
often said the thing which was not.

“He was the more confirmed in this opinion, because, he observed, that
as I agreed in every feature of my body with other Yahoos, except
where it was to my real disadvantage in point of strength, speed, and
activity, the shortness of my claws, and some other particulars where
nature had no part; so from the representation I had given him of our
lives, our manners, and our actions, he found as near a resemblance in
the disposition of our minds.” He said, “the Yahoos were known to
hate one another, more than they did any different species of animals;
and the reason usually assigned was, the odiousness of their own
shapes, which all could see in the rest, but not in themselves. He had
therefore begun to think it not unwise in us to cover our bodies, and
by that invention conceal many of our deformities from each other,
which would else be hardly supportable. But he now found he had been
mistaken, and that the dissensions of those brutes in his country were
owing to the same cause with ours, as I had described them. For if,”
said he, “you throw among five Yahoos as much food as would be
sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall
together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself;
and therefore a servant was usually employed to stand by while they
were feeding abroad, and those kept at home were tied at a distance
from each other: that if a cow died of age or accident, before a
Houyhnhnm could secure it for his own Yahoos, those in the
neighbourhood would come in herds to seize it, and then would ensue
such a battle as I had described, with terrible wounds made by their
claws on both sides, although they seldom were able to kill one
another, for want of such convenient instruments of death as we had
invented. At other times, the like battles have been fought between the
Yahoos of several neighbourhoods, without any visible cause; those of
one district watching all opportunities to surprise the next, before
they are prepared. But if they find their project has miscarried, they
return home, and, for want of enemies, engage in what I call a civil
war among themselves.

“That in some fields of his country there are certain shining stones of
several colours, whereof the Yahoos are violently fond: and when part
of these stones is fixed in the earth, as it sometimes happens, they
will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out; then carry
them away, and hide them by heaps in their kennels; but still looking
round with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their
treasure.” My master said, “he could never discover the reason of this
unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of any use to a
Yahoo; but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle
of avarice which I had ascribed to mankind. That he had once, by way of
experiment, privately removed a heap of these stones from the place
where one of his Yahoos had buried it; whereupon the sordid animal,
missing his treasure, by his loud lamenting brought the whole herd to
the place, there miserably howled, then fell to biting and tearing the
rest, began to pine away, would neither eat, nor sleep, nor work, till
he ordered a servant privately to convey the stones into the same hole,
and hide them as before; which, when his Yahoo had found, he
presently recovered his spirits and good humour, but took good care to
remove them to a better hiding place, and has ever since been a very
serviceable brute.”

My master further assured me, which I also observed myself, “that in
the fields where the shining stones abound, the fiercest and most
frequent battles are fought, occasioned by perpetual inroads of the
neighbouring Yahoos.”

He said, “it was common, when two Yahoos discovered such a stone in a
field, and were contending which of them should be the proprietor, a
third would take the advantage, and carry it away from them both;”
which my master would needs contend to have some kind of resemblance
with our suits at law; wherein I thought it for our credit not to
undeceive him; since the decision he mentioned was much more equitable
than many decrees among us; because the plaintiff and defendant there
lost nothing beside the stone they contended for: whereas our courts of
equity would never have dismissed the cause, while either of them had
any thing left.

My master, continuing his discourse, said, “there was nothing that
rendered the Yahoos more odious, than their undistinguishing appetite
to devour every thing that came in their way, whether herbs, roots,
berries, the corrupted flesh of animals, or all mingled together: and
it was peculiar in their temper, that they were fonder of what they
could get by rapine or stealth, at a greater distance, than much better
food provided for them at home. If their prey held out, they would eat
till they were ready to burst; after which, nature had pointed out to
them a certain root that gave them a general evacuation.

“There was also another kind of root, very juicy, but somewhat rare and
difficult to be found, which the Yahoos sought for with much
eagerness, and would suck it with great delight; it produced in them
the same effects that wine has upon us. It would make them sometimes
hug, and sometimes tear one another; they would howl, and grin, and
chatter, and reel, and tumble, and then fall asleep in the mud.”

I did indeed observe that the Yahoos were the only animals in this
country subject to any diseases; which, however, were much fewer than
horses have among us, and contracted, not by any ill-treatment they
meet with, but by the nastiness and greediness of that sordid brute.
Neither has their language any more than a general appellation for
those maladies, which is borrowed from the name of the beast, and
called hnea-yahoo, or Yahoo’s evil; and the cure prescribed is a
mixture of their own dung and urine, forcibly put down the Yahoo’s
throat. This I have since often known to have been taken with success,
and do here freely recommend it to my countrymen for the public good,
as an admirable specific against all diseases produced by repletion.

“As to learning, government, arts, manufactures, and the like,” my
master confessed, “he could find little or no resemblance between the
Yahoos of that country and those in ours; for he only meant to
observe what parity there was in our natures. He had heard, indeed,
some curious Houyhnhnms observe, that in most herds there was a sort
of ruling Yahoo (as among us there is generally some leading or
principal stag in a park), who was always more deformed in body, and
mischievous in disposition, than any of the rest; that this leader had
usually a favourite as like himself as he could get, whose employment
was to lick his master’s feet and posteriors, and drive the female
Yahoos to his kennel; for which he was now and then rewarded with a
piece of ass’s flesh. This favourite is hated by the whole herd, and
therefore, to protect himself, keeps always near the person of his
leader. He usually continues in office till a worse can be found; but
the very moment he is discarded, his successor, at the head of all the
Yahoos in that district, young and old, male and female, come in a
body, and discharge their excrements upon him from head to foot. But
how far this might be applicable to our courts, and favourites, and
ministers of state, my master said I could best determine.”

I durst make no return to this malicious insinuation, which debased
human understanding below the sagacity of a common hound, who has
judgment enough to distinguish and follow the cry of the ablest dog in
the pack, without being ever mistaken.

My master told me, “there were some qualities remarkable in the
Yahoos, which he had not observed me to mention, or at least very
slightly, in the accounts I had given of humankind.” He said, “those
animals, like other brutes, had their females in common; but in this
they differed, that the she Yahoo would admit the males while she was
pregnant; and that the hes would quarrel and fight with the females, as
fiercely as with each other; both which practices were such degrees of
infamous brutality, as no other sensitive creature ever arrived at.

“Another thing he wondered at in the Yahoos, was their strange
disposition to nastiness and dirt; whereas there appears to be a
natural love of cleanliness in all other animals.” As to the two former
accusations, I was glad to let them pass without any reply, because I
had not a word to offer upon them in defence of my species, which
otherwise I certainly had done from my own inclinations. But I could
have easily vindicated humankind from the imputation of singularity
upon the last article, if there had been any swine in that country (as
unluckily for me there were not), which, although it may be a sweeter
quadruped than a Yahoo, cannot, I humbly conceive, in justice,
pretend to more cleanliness; and so his honour himself must have owned,
if he had seen their filthy way of feeding, and their custom of
wallowing and sleeping in the mud.

My master likewise mentioned another quality which his servants had
discovered in several Yahoos, and to him was wholly unaccountable. He
said, “a fancy would sometimes take a Yahoo to retire into a corner,
to lie down, and howl, and groan, and spurn away all that came near
him, although he were young and fat, wanted neither food nor water, nor
did the servant imagine what could possibly ail him. And the only
remedy they found was, to set him to hard work, after which he would
infallibly come to himself.” To this I was silent out of partiality to
my own kind; yet here I could plainly discover the true seeds of
spleen, which only seizes on the lazy, the luxurious, and the rich;
who, if they were forced to undergo the same regimen, I would undertake
for the cure.

His honour had further observed, “that a female Yahoo would often
stand behind a bank or a bush, to gaze on the young males passing by,
and then appear, and hide, using many antic gestures and grimaces, at
which time it was observed that she had a most offensive smell; and
when any of the males advanced, would slowly retire, looking often
back, and with a counterfeit show of fear, run off into some convenient
place, where she knew the male would follow her.

“At other times, if a female stranger came among them, three or four of
her own sex would get about her, and stare, and chatter, and grin, and
smell her all over; and then turn off with gestures, that seemed to
express contempt and disdain.”

Perhaps my master might refine a little in these speculations, which he
had drawn from what he observed himself, or had been told him by
others; however, I could not reflect without some amazement, and much
sorrow, that the rudiments of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal,
should have place by instinct in womankind.

I expected every moment that my master would accuse the Yahoos of
those unnatural appetites in both sexes, so common among us. But
nature, it seems, has not been so expert a school-mistress; and these
politer pleasures are entirely the productions of art and reason on our
side of the globe.