Rationality and Community: Swift's Criticism of the Houyhnhnms

Author(s): Mary P. Nichols

Source: The Journal of Politics , Nov., 1981, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Nov., 1981), pp. 1153-1169
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political
Science Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2130193

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The University of Chicago Press and Southern Political Science Association are collaborating
with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Politics

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Rationality and Community:
Swift's Criticism
of
the Houyhnhnms

MARY P. NICHOLS

G ulliver's Travels is Jonathan Swift's answer to the political

proposals that Socrates made in Plato's Republic. In the city
Socrates describes, philosophers enforce both communism of prop-
erty and qommunism of women and children. Reason rules the pas-
sions, and individuality is suppressed. By presenting the land of the
Houyhnhnms as a caricature of the Republic's best city, Swift shows
the harsh, tyrannic elements in the rule of reason or philosophy.'
Lemuel Gulliver, the narrator of Gulliver's Travels, however, ap-
proves of the Houyhnhnms. He tries to imitate their way of life. He
publishes his travels in order to reform men so that they act as ra-
tionally as the Houyhnhnms (IV,10).2 Traditional interpretations
of Gulliver's Travels assume that Swift shares Gulliver's love of the
Houyhnhnms and his hatred of mankind for its failure to achieve the
Houyhnhnms' rationality.3 I argue, in contrast, that Swift is

' It may be that Plato also saw the harshness of the city in the Republic, and that he
did not intend the rule of philosophers and communism as serious political proposals.
For arguments concerning the "comic" character of the Republic, see Leo Strauss, The
City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1964) and Allan Bloom's inter-
pretative essay in The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968).
2 References to Gulliver's Travels will indicate voyage and chapter.
3 See Milton P. Foster's introduction to A Casebook on Gulliver Among the
Houyhnhnms (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1961), xii. For examples of
critics who tend to share the Houyhnhnms' understanding of themselves as "the perfec-
tion of nature," see John B. Moore, "The Role of Gulliver," Modern Philology XXV

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 1154 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

critical of both the Houyhnhnms and his hero Gulliver. In his love
of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver accepts an idea of perfection which
makes it impossible for him either to understand or to participate in
human life. To substantiate this interpretation, I consider, first,
the land of the Houyhnhnms and, then, Gulliver, who wants to
make this land his home.

THE LAND OF THE HOUYHNHNMS

The grand maxim of the Houyhnhnms is "to cultivate reason, and

to be wholly governed by it." Reason for the Houyhnhnms,
Gulliver claims, is not "a point problematical" as it is with human
beings, in whom it is "mingled, obscured, or discoloured by passion
and interest" (IV, 8). The Houyhnhnms consequently have no
vices. Just as they are free from envy and malice, so are they free
from sexual passions. Marriages are determined by parents and
friends who "choose such colours as will not make any disagreeable
mixture in the breed." The Houyhnhnms value strength in the male
and comeliness in the female, "not upon account of love, but to
preserve the race from degenerating." A Houyhnhnm looks upon
his marriage "as one of the necessary actions of a reasonable being."
So, too, do the Houyhnhnms educate their children "entirely from
the dictates of reason," for "they have no fondness for their colts or
foals"(IV,8). To prevent overpopulation, couples cease to have in-
tercourse after they have produced a foal of each sex. If couples
past childbearing age lose one of their offspring, childbearing
couples donate one of their own and have another one to replace it.
If a couple has two males, an exchange is made with a couple which
has two females. The Houyhnhnms thus seem to have nothing of
their own to which they are attached. When one of their Yahoo

(May 1928), 469-480; George Sherburn, "Errors Concerning the Houyhnhnms,"

Modern Philology LVI (November 1958), 92-97; Allan Bloom, "An Outline of
Gulliver's Travels," in Ancients and Moderns, ed. Joseph Cropsey (New York: Basic
Books Inc., 1964); and Charles Peake, "Swift and Passions," Modern Language
Review LV (April 1960), 169-180. John F. Ross, "The Final Comedy of Lemuel
Gulliver," Studies in the Comic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941);
Kathleen M. Williams, "Gulliver's Voyage to the Houyhnhnms," Journal of English
Literary History XVIII (December 1951), 275-286; and Irving Ehrenpreis, The Per-
sonality of Jonathan Swift (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958) do ex-
press reservations about Swift's approval of the Houyhnhnms, but their analyses do not
deal with the fundamental issues of political philosophy, which, I believe, Swift ad-
dresses.

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 SWIFI AND THE HOUYHNHNMS 1155

slaves hides a colored stone, they think he is moved by an "unnatural

appetite" (IV, 7). Presumably, they understand neither the value of
something that has no practical use nor the pleasure that comes from
having something of one's own.
The Houyhnhnms would be ideal citizens of Plato's Republic,
where the private is eliminated in favor of the public or the common
(e.g., Rep., 462a ff.). In the city described there, men say " 'my
own' and 'not my own' about the same thing, and in the same way"
(462c). Not only is there communism of property (416d-417b), but
communism of women and children as well. No woman in the
Republic's city "is to live privately with any man" (457d). The
citizens are "married" for a limited time by rulers in order to pro-
duce the kind and number of human beings needed by the city (458e
ff.). By pairing the best men with the best women and rearing only
their offspring, the rulers maintain "the most eminent quality in the
citizenry" (459d-e). The rulers also control the number of mar-
riages so that the city will maintain its optimum size, becoming
"neither big nor little" (460a). Like the marriages of the
Houyhnhnms, the marriages in the Republic occur for the sake of
public utility. The citizens must have no passions that interfere
with these reasonable arrangements. They are to show no personal
preferences for mates, nor desire to prolong a marriage beyond the
designated time. Moreover, their passions are not to be aroused
when they exercise naked in the gymnasium with members of the
opposite sex (451b ff.). They are as sexless as the Houyhnhnms.
Gulliver claims that the Houyhnhnms possess the virtues of
friendship and benevolence (IV, 8). But just as the Houyhnhnms
love the children of other couples as much as they love their own,
their friendship and benevolence are "not confined to particular ob-
jects, but universal to the whole race." A stranger is "equally
treated with the nearest neighbour" (IV, 8).4 The Houyhnhnms do
not have particular friends any more than a married Houyhnhnm
has particular affection for his spouse: mates "pass their lives with
the same friendship and mutual benevolence that they bear to all
others of the same species who come in their way" (IV, 8).
The Houyhnhnms thus treat the members of their species in the

4Ehrenpreis quotes from one of Swift's letters to Bolingbroke: "Your notions of

friendship are new to me," Swift wrote; "I believe that every man is born with his
quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another." The Personality of
Jonathan Swift, 105.

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 1156 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

way that the citizens of the Republic treat one another under the
communistic arrangements. Those citizens are "friends" in that
they hold "all things in common" (424a), but they do not single out
particular citizens as the objects of their affection.5 Their "love" is a
love of the whole city. They are gladdened and pained by the same
things. They have no private joys or griefs (462b). Their model is
the man who does not grieve at the deaths of his relatives or friends:
for him "it is least terrible to be deprived of a son, or a brother, or
money, or anything else of that sort" (387e).
That the Houyhnhnms love one another equally is consistent with
the fact that they have no individual identities. There is a class of
servants among the Houyhnhnms: "the white, the sorrel, and the
irongray," who are "not so exactly shaped . . . nor born with equal
talents of mind" (IV, 6). But, with the exception of a sorrel nag
who is distinguished by her affection for Gulliver (IV, 11), there are
no marks of distinction within the classes. Consequently, the
Houyhnhnms have no personal names. If all are alike, would any
be preferred in love? The love of the Houyhnhnms for one another
amounts to love of reason abstracted from the particular in which
we always see it manifested. Rather than being directly linked to
each other through particular love, the Houyhnhnms have only in-
direct ties through their universal love of reason. Not surprisingly,
then, Houyhnhnms do not mourn the death of their mates; friends
and relatives express "neither joy nor grief" at a Houyhnhnm's death
(IV, 9).
The Houyhnhnms have little to do since they themselves are
perfect. Their major activity seems to be their rule of the Yahoos. It
is in their treatment of the Yahoos that we see the harshness that
underlies their rational rule. The Yahoos represent man's pas-
sionate side -the side missing from both the Houyhnhnms and the
Republic, where Socrates says little about the lowest class, the
"desiring" part of the city.6 Swift's presentation of the Yahoos
shows the problems inherent in reconciling rational and passionate
elements. The Houyhnhnms' treatment of the Yahoos suggests that
only the harshest measures can control passions.

5 See Glaucon's misunderstanding of this point (468c) followed by Socrates' presen-

tation to him of a view of love appropriate for the city he is founding (47c ff.).
6 The lowest class shares in the virtue of moderation in that its members agree that
the rulers, the "better" men, should rule in the city. Moderation is the rule of the
worse by the better (430e-432a). The desiring part of the city, sharing in moderation,
therefore accepts the city's austerity.

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
SWIFI AND THE HOUYHNHNMS 1157

Swift's portrayal of the Yahoos indicates why one might want to

control the passions. The Yahoos resemble men in form, but they
are savage and have no capacity to reason. Their passions run wild.
They are filthy, gluttonous, lewd, insolent, and violent. They are
also possessive. For example, they are "violently fond" of colored
stones, spending days digging them out of the earth and hiding them
in their kennels "for fear their comrades should find out their
treasure" (IV, 7). They fight Yahoos of other neighborhoods
"without any visible cause" as well as their own neighbors if enemies
are wanting (IV, 7). But although they are competitive and
pugnacious, they are quick to defend their own kind. When
Gulliver gives one of them "a good blow," a herd of at least forty
came from a nearby field, "howling and making odious faces" (IV,
1). And when Gulliver catches a three-year old Yahoo, "a whole
troop of old ones came . .. at the noise," but found that the "cub was
safe" for it had run away (IV, 8). In general, Gulliver finds them
"cunning, malicious, treacherous, and revengeful" (IV, 8). They
are restrained by the Houyhnhnms who rule them by force.
Only in regard to the Yahoos do the Houyhnhnms disagree among
themselves. But all of the suggestions that they make for dealing
with the Yahoos have the character of tyranny, since their proposals
culminate at best in simple suppression and eventual elimination of
the Yahoos. Their recurrent debate is whether the Yahoos "should
be exterminated from the face of the earth" (IV, 9). The less harsh
expedient proposed by Gulliver's master is gradual extinction by
castration, an expedient recommended not because it is more gentle
but because it is more useful-the castrated Yahoos will be "trac-
table and fitter for use" (IV, 9). When the Houyhnhnms act
toward the Yahoos, they do not act toward beings whose otherness
or distinctness modifies or restrains their own actions. They act
only for the sake of maintaining the homogeneity of their own com-
munity.
Another of Swift's satirical works, the "Modest Proposal," sheds
light on his disapproval of the Houyhnhnms' "rationality." That
work proposes to relieve the poor in Ireland by having them sell
their children to be used as food and clothing. Swift counts on his
readers' attachment to their own to make the modest proposal
abhorrent to them. Because the Houyhnhnms lack such attach-
ment, they would consider "rationally" the merits of such a plan.
The modest proposer assumes, for example, that the poor in Ireland
will not suffer when their children die. The Houyhnhnms do not

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 1158 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

suffer when their offspring die, since they do not love their own
progeny more than the progeny of others. And they immediately
have another colt or receive a replacement. When the modest pro-
poser assumes that men will not hesitate to give up their children for
public or private benefit, he is assuming that they are like the
Houyhnhnms who do this very thing. Throughout his proposal, he
assumes that the family is based on rational calculation to the exclu-
sion of love or affection. For example, he argues that mothers will
care more for their children if they expect to sell them when they are
a year old. 7 Once it becomes reasonable (because profitable) to take
care of children, mothers will do so.
While addressees of the modest proposal are assumed to be both
rational and dispassionate, the proposal itself requires treating men
as if they were brutes. A small percentage of Ireland's children
must be kept from market and reserved for breed, of which only one
fourth need be males. Mating should take place in accordance with
the size of the population that the country can maintain. Indeed,
one of the intentions of the modest proposal is said to be the reduc-
tion in size of an excessive population.8 The reasonable population
that the proposal tries to effect is maintained by the Houyhnhnms as
a matter of course. Lacking the passions that lead to overpopula-
tion, they marry and have children simply for the sake of preserving
the country's population.
The "Modest Proposal" thus reveals the error in applying the Hou-
yhnhnms' harsh "rationality" to human beings. We see this error
in Gulliver's Travels in the Houyhnhnms' treatment of Gulliver,
which manifests none of the benevolence that Gulliver attributes to
them. Even Gulliver's master regards him as a curiosity: he accedes
to Gulliver's request that he not be called a Yahoo so that Gulliver
will be put "into a good humour" and become "more diverting" (IV,
3). The Houyhnhnms do not force Gulliver to join the Yahoos of
whom he lives in mortal fear, only because they do not want him to
lead the Yahoos against their cattle (IV, 10). Treating Gulliver
simply as a Yahoo, they finally cast him out. They cannot com-
prehend a being who is both like and unlike themselves - toward
whom they must act and yet who limits their action. If the

7Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in
Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country; and for making them
beneficial to the Publick," Irish Tracts 1728-1733, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1964), 115.
8 Ibid., 116.

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 SWIFT AND THE HOUYHNHNMS 1159

Houyhnhnms recognized that Gulliver was different from

themselves but yet deserved consideration because he was in part
like themselves, they would have to modify their actions toward him
in order to take his "otherness" into account. But the Houyhnhnms
are aware of no such limitations. They know only other
Houyhnhnms who are indistinguishable from themselves, and
Yahoos who are so different from themselves that the Houyhnhnms
seem justified in ruling them despotically.
Homogeneity is the key to both the Republic and the land of the
Houyhnhnms - a homogeneity that is essentially tyrannical because
it suppresses the diversity present in any human community.
Simplicity replaces diversity; stability replaces change. Socrates
replaces the diverse pantheon of Homeric gods with a divine
simplicity (380d-383c). The city attempts to be static; the primary
political action of the philosophers, arranging the marriage lots,
aims at preservation of the status quo. The Houyhnhnms' general
assembly, which meets only every four years, also aims at preserving
the status quo. There, the districts deficient in hay, oats, cows, or
Yahoos are supplied from districts in which they are plentiful, and
colts are assigned to deficient couples (IV, 8). Just as the
Houyhnhnms cannot accommodate novelty (they must expel
Gulliver), the Republic's philosophers cannot incorporate change
into the city-time brings the city's collapse (546a).
The order and efficiency of the Houyhnhnm's rule of the Yahoos
also characterize the Republic's city. In the Republic, both the
philosophers who rule and the military class which they command
provide the control that maintains the city's unity and stability. The
military class corresponds to the spirited part of the soul, just as the
rulers represent reason, and the lowest class the desires. Swift in-
dicates the intimate connection between reason and spiritedness in
such a situation by collapsing the Republic's two upper classes into
one, the Houyhnhnms. Spiritedness provides the force in reason's
tyranny over the passions. Perhaps because the horse is an animal
often characterized by spiritedness,9 Swift portrayed his rational
rulers as horses.'0

9 E.g., Xenophon, Art of Horsemanship, IX.

10 According to D. Nichol Smith, however, Swift chose the horse to represent the
perfection of nature because the horse is "the animal which we agree in calling
noblest." "Jonathan Swift: Some Observations," Essays by Divers Hands, Being the
Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom (London: Ox-
ford University Press, 1935), XIV, 28-48, 43.

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1160 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

By the end of his fourth voyage, Gulliver strives to follow the

Houyhnhnms' way of life. Indeed, his purpose in writing Gulliver's
Travels is to bring his beloved horses as examples to men. He il-
lustrates his complete truthfulness by quoting Sinon: ". . . if wicked
fortune made Sinon miserable, it did not also make him a false man
and a liar" (IV, 12).11 Sinon, however, asserted his truthfulness to
the Trojans when he brought them the wooden horse. Gulliver ap-
parently fails to see the similarity between the Trojan horse and the
in some ways wooden horses he is bringing to men. Sinon's horse
was instrumental in destroying those who accepted it, the Trojans
who fought to defend the passion of Paris. The parallel between the
Trojan horse and the Houyhnhnms suggests that it is wise to reject
the Houyhnhnms. Why, then, does Gulliver accept them?

GULLIVER'S SEARCH FOR PERFECTION

From early youth, Gulliver has a desire to travel. While he

studies medicine, he also studies "navigation and other parts of
mathematics useful for those who intend to travel" (I, 1). He goes
on several voyages. He finally marries, but his marriage does not
indicate that he desires the personal attachments and stability of
domestic life. "Advised to alter his condition," he marries a woman
who brings him four hundred pounds (I, 1). He nevertheless has
financial difficulties and returns to sea for a six-year voyage. Aboard
ship, he reads "the best authors, ancient and modern"; on shore, he
observes "the manners and dispositions of the people" (I, 1). He
then does spend three years at home, but his medical practice proves
insufficient to support his wife and children. He now undertakes
the first of the four voyages that constitute Gulliver's Travels.
Gulliver admits that he "ha[s] been condemned by nature and for-
tune to an active and restless life" (II, 1). He does not seem to know
what he is looking for, or what would make him happy. Time after
time he leaves his wife and children in order to travel. 12 He claims
to have a thirst for "seeing the world," but no country he visits, until
he comes to the land of the Houyhnhnms, satisfies him. In his
desire to know different ways of life and in his constant search for a
good one, Gulliver is Swift's presentation of a philosopher.
Gulliver even brings Socrates to mind - a man who investigated

" The (luotation is from Virgil, The Aeneicd, II. 110-111.

12 When he takes his fourth voyage,he leaves his wife "big with child" (IV, 1).

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 SWIFI AND THE HOUYHNHNMS 1161

different opinions and ways of life in order to free himself from the
partial truths embodied in the laws and customs of a particular time
and place. Socrates also resembles Gulliver in lacking a strong at-
tachment to his family, and in his poverty. Socrates admits that his
philosophic activity caused him to neglect "domestic business" and
"making money" (Apol., 36b; cf. 36d and 38b). The pursuit of
truth appears to lead men away from particular or concrete ex-
istence, ties to their families, and an interest in providing for the
necessities of life.
Gulliver's Travels represents Gulliver's mental wanderings among
alternative ways of life in the guise of voyages to different lands. He
has moved away from real voyages to imaginary ones, from con-
crete existence to fantasy. In these fantasies, Gulliver's imagination
is fueled by the ancient and modern books which he reads. Lilliput
is based on Lockian commercial principles, Brobdingnag is
premodern and technologically undeveloped, the lands of the third
voyage caricature a Cartesian paradise, and the land of the
Houyhnhnms is modelled on Plato's Republic. 13
In his portrayal of Lilliput, Gulliver reveals his displeasure with
his own society and its way of life. The religious wars in which
Lilliput engages, the ambitions of its monarch, and the intrigues of
its court are petty and dehumanizing. The laws of Lilliput en-
courage the calculation of gain and manipulate men by their desire
for pleasure. 14 Lilliput is technologically advanced: the people "are
most excellent mathematicians, and arrived to a perfection in
mechanics" (I, 1). Their medicine is both efficacious and painless.
After the Lilliputians wound Gulliver, they give him an "ointment
very pleasant to the smell, which in a few minutes removed all the
smart of their arrows" (1,1). But in spite of Lilliput's achievements
in science and medicine, which Gulliver's background prepares him

13 According to Bloom, Swift organized Gullivers Travels on the basis of the

distinction between ancients and moderns. Lilliptit portrays modern practice and
Brobdingnag ancient l)ractice, while the third and fouirth voyages deal with modern
and ancient theory respectively. "An Ouitline of Gtullivers Travels- 241.
14 Lilliputians picture jtistice "with a bag of gold open in her right hand, and a
sword sheathed in her left, to show that slhe is more disposed to reward than to p1unish
(I, 6). Laws move men less by their desire to avoid pain than by their desire for

pleasure. Lawabindingness is rewarded by money (I, 6). Hence, greed appears t

encouiraged, along with the restraint that comes from calctulation of gain. Moreover.
Lilliput's criminal code sulpports commerce. For examl)le, fratud is p)ulnished miiore
harsshly than theft, because if fratud were widespread miieni would not be willing to buy
and sell on credit (I, 6). Sewe Bloonm, "An Ouitline of G(ulliverv T'rav'ls. 246.

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 1162 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

to appreciate, Gulliver finds the Lilliputians "little" people with

whom he is too "big" to live. Gulliver's dissatisfaction with Lilliput
is a reflection of his dissatisfaction with his own society. He is eager
to leave. Although he claims he wants to return home, his "in-
satiable desire of seeing foreign countries" allows him only two
months' rest there (I, 8).
Brobdingnag is a premodern society, isolated from the rest of the
world by its lack of seaports and commerce. Gulliver's reading
about ancient societies as well as his disgust with modern Lilliput
has led him to imagine that a premodern society is peopled by
giants. The king of Brobdingnag is wise and virtuous. The people
there are proud of their humanity and reject the opinion that
mankind has degenerated (II, 7). They are content without the
complexities of modern science. The king is repelled by Gulliver's
offer to teach him how to make gunpowder (II, 7). Brob-
dingnagians govern by "common sense and reason, not having
"reduced politics to a science, as the more acute wits of Europe have
done" (II, 7)..15 Among these people, Gulliver sees himself as a "lit-
tle" man who has all the prejudices of his time (II, 6 and 7). He is
small enough to fit into the hand of a Brobdingnagian.
In spite of Brobdingnag's virtues, Gulliver is not entirely happy
there. The people are so much larger than Gulliver that he can see
in great detail the coarseness and irregularity of their skin (11,1).
"No object ever disgusted [him] so much as the sight of a mother's
breast as she feeds her child" (II, 1; cf. II, 3 and 4). He is horrified
when the Maids of Honor fondle him. He finds their smell "very of-
fensive." When they dress in front of him, their naked bodies fill
him with "horror and disgust" (II, 5). 16 We see now that Gulliver is
repelled not only by the pettiness of commercial life but also by the
merely physical, or bodily, whose ugliness he imagines. It is man's
corporeal existence that makes it necessary for him to provide for the
material conditions of life. Gulliver's repulsion from both the pet-
tiness of Lilliput and the ugliness of bodies in Brobdingnag

15 David Hume entitled one of his political essays "That Politics May Be Reduced to
a Science," Hume's Moral and Political Philosophy, ed. Henry D. Aiken (New York:
Hafner Publishing Company, 1968), 295-306.
16 That bigness does not necessarily repel, however, is seen in the episode of the
Lilliputian lady who was said to have "taken a violent affection for [Gulliver's] person"
(I, 6). Bloom intimates that Gulliver has gratified the lady, "An Outline of Gulliver's
Travels," 238. At any rate, by the time he writes Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver is eager
to cover up the episode. (I, 6).

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 SWIFT AND THE HOUYHNHNMS 1163

demonstrates his desire to escape from the physical constraints

which men face. It is appropriate that while in Brobdingnag he
tries to "leap over" some cow dung that lies in his path (II, 5). His
failure in this endeavor comically foreshadows his failure to escape
from physical nature through his travels. To Gulliver's chagrin, his
mishap amuses the Brobdingnagian court for some time. In con-
trast to Gulliver, the Brobdingnagians are not repelled by man's
physical existence.
A desire for freedom from the impositions of the body is one of the
impulses behind modern science. By becoming a doctor and study-
ing the "useful sciences" (I, 1), Gulliver shares in the modern enter-
prise of conquering nature through an understanding of its laws. But
a nature that should be conquered is hostile, or at least indifferent,
to man. Modernity views nature as ugly.'7 In Brobdingnag,
Gulliver wishes that he had the appropriate instruments to dissect a
louse, although he finds the sight of it "so nauseous, that it perfectly
turned [his] stomach." It is so big that he can see its limbs with his
naked eye, "much better than those of a European louse through a
microscope" (II, 4). The instruments of science show men nature's
minute details and reveal their ugliness. Gulliver rejects not only
modern life but nature itself. He is uncomfortable even in a
premodern society, for it accepts the natural constraints of body.
Gulliver hopes to leave Brobdingnag, for he desires his "liberty"
(II, 8). He resents needing constant protection. He longs to be
among a people with whom he can converse "on equal terms." He
even remembers "those domestic pledges" he left behind in England.
Yet, when he returns, he is still repelled by bodies -this time the
smallness of them. With the vision of the giant Brobdingnagians in
his mind, he thinks that the sailors who bring him home are "the
most contemptible creatures [he] ever beheld" (II, 8). He "look[s]
down" on his family members "as if they had been pygmies" (II, 8).

17 For example, consider Descartes's view of the defectiveness of nature in his Fifth
Meditation as well as his assertion of his own existence in his First Meditation in the
face of a possibly hostile natural world. Descartes concludes his Discourse on Method
by looking forward to a "practical" philosophy, "by which, knowing the nature and
behavior of fire, water, air, stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies which surround
us," we can "make ourselves masters and possessors of nature." Descartes singles out
medicine as the science which might most benefit men. Discourse on Method, trans.
Laurence J. Lafleur (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1976), 40. Con-
sider also Hobbes's description of the state of nature and the fact that Hobbes's
knowledge of the passions allows him to recommend a commonwealth as an alter-
native to the state of nature. The Leviathan, I, 13-14; II, 17.

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 1164 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

Although he claims that "in a little time" he came "to a right

understanding" with his family and friends, within ten days of his
arrival at home he is visited by a captain with whom he returns to
sea (III, 1).
While in Brobdingnag, Gulliver found "[t]he learning of this peo-
ple to be very defective," and the king subject to "narrow principles
and short views" (II,7). Although Gulliver is ready to reject
modern commercial life, he is still enamored of modern learning. He
is a man of science; he has studied medicine and physics (I, 2). In
his next voyage, however, he comes to question the utility of scien-
tific learning. The people of Lagado have "schemes of putting all
arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics upon a new foot" (III, 4).
Gulliver's imagination of this land is influenced obviously by his
reading of Descartes and Bacon.
Gulliver now imagines the relief of man's estate as both futile and
disgusting. He visits academies that are meant to issue in
discoveries and inventions, but none of them appear to work. Pro-
fessors contrive "new instruments and tools . . . whereby, as they
undertake, one man shall do the work of ten" (III, 4). Gulliver im-
plies the futility of such projects when he notes that none of them are
yet perfected and the country lies in waste. Other projects are
repellent as well as ineffective. The "most ancient student of the
Academy," whose "hands and clothes [are] daubed over with filth,"
is engaged in "reducing human excrement to its original food" (III,
5).
Gulliver's disenchantment with modern science is completed
when he encounters medicine in Lagado and pictures the horrors of
his own profession. A great physician demonstrates his method of
extracting disease by drawing air in and out of the body with a pair
of bellows. The dog on whom he operates dies on the spot. When
Gulliver departs, the doctor is trying to revive the dog by the same
method (III, 5). This doctor comes to typify the profession of
medicine for Gulliver, for when he describes medicine to the
Houyhnhnms he presents it as identical with medicine in Lagado
(IV, 6).
After looking at the distortions of science in the academies of
Lagado, Gulliver visits a magician, who calls forth ancient and
modern shades for him to see. He sees images of antiquity that are
great and magnificent, but he is "disgusted with modern history,"
since it is acted out by cowards, fools, flatterers, traitors, atheists,
sodomites, and informers (III, 8). Gulliver now believes in the

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
SWIFT AND THE HOUYHNHNMS 1165

degeneration of mankind, an opinion which he, along with the

proud Brobdingnagians, earlier rejected (II, 7). His belief in the
decline of mankind finds expression in his description of the Yahoos
in his last voyage.
Gulliver ends his third voyage with a visit to the struldbrugs,
human beings who never die. Before meeting the immortals,
Gulliver imagines all he would accomplish were he privileged with
eternal life on earth. He would mingle with the immortal
brotherhood "a few of the most valuable among you mortals, whom
length of time would harden me to lose with little or no reluctance,
and treat your posterity after the same manner; just as a man diverts
himself with the annual succession of pinks and tulips in his garden,
without regretting the loss of those which withered the preceding
year" (III, 10). Although Gulliver delights in thinking of himself as
detached from all particular human beings, he also contemplates his
benevolence toward all: with the experience and study that his
many years would gain for him, Gulliver would become "a living
treasury of knowledge and wisdom" and "the oracle of the nation"
(III, 10). Gulliver is well prepared for praising the Republic's city,
where men are detached from particular human beings but "love"
equally all the members of the city as their brothers.
Gulliver is surprised to find that the struldbrugs are disgusting
creatures who suffer the worst aspects of senescence. They are "the
most mortifying sight" he ever beheld. His "keen appetite for
perpetuity of life was much abated" (III, 10). He is now ready to
acquiesce in death, as do the Houyhnhnms whom he idealizes in his
last voyage.
At the same time that Gulliver accepts his own mortality, he gives
up his medical practice. On his last voyage he goes as the ship's cap-
tain rather than as its physician, having "grown weary of a surgeon's
employment at sea" (IV, 1). His reflections on medicine in his third
voyage do not simply make him aware of the limitations of medicine
but lead him to reject medicine completely. Through an event
aboard ship, however, Swift indicates that a complete rejection of
medicine may be as undesirable as a wholehearted acceptance of it.
Several men aboard ship die of the fever. This makes us wonder
whether Gulliver should not have been more attentive to the body's
weaknesses and possible remedies. The deaths of these men lead to
difficulties for Gulliver. He can find only rogues as replacements,
who persuade the rest of the crew to mutiny and to abandon
Gulliver on shore. Not only does Gulliver fail to use his medical

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
1166 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

skill to cure sickness but he does not control the passions of the men
under his command. In neither case does he deal with defective or
ugly nature for the good of the ship. Gulliver's neglect of the unruly
passions of his men introduces the theme of the fourth
voyage - man's passions. The shore on which Gulliver is aban-
doned is the land of the Houyhnhnms, where he meets beings who
have neither physical diseases in need of medicine nor passions in
need of rule. Gulliver has given up his inept attempt to deal with
particulars -whether through the cure of bodies or the rule of
men - in order to praise the universal, the reason of the
Houyhnhnms. His attempt to escape from human nature is now
broadened from a disgust with the body to a repulsion from the pas-
sions.
In imagining the land of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver separates
reason from the passions, embodying the former in the Houyhnhnms
and the latter in the Yahoos. He accepts the Houyhnhnms' designa-
tion of themselves as "the perfection of nature" (IV, 3). When
Gulliver first sees the Houyhnhnms, he thinks that their actions and
bearing are "not unlike those of a philosopher" (IV, 1). He is con-
tent to spend the rest of his life among the Houyhnhnms, imitating
their virtues. Their virtues, he claims, are friendship and
benevolence (IV, 8). His attributing friendship to the Houyhnhnms
and his satisfaction with his life among them indicate what has been
suggested from the beginning -Gulliver can neither understand the
true meaning of friendship nor accept its demands. Once Gulliver
was visited by an acquaintance whom he thought came to see him
"only out of friendship." The man actually came on business (III,
1). At the beginning of his book, Gulliver admitted that he had
"few friends" (I, 1).
Gulliver's love for the Houyhnhnms is matched by his hatred for
the Yahoos. "I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an
animal, nor one against whom I naturally conceived so strong an an-
tipathy," he writes (IV, 1). This antipathy finds a comic expression
in Gulliver's reaction to the amorous embrace of a female Yahoo
(IV, 8). His reaction to the Yahoos applies to himself as well.
"When I happened to behold the reflection of my own form in a lake
or fountain," he says, "I turned away my face in horror and detesta-
tion of myself, and could better endure the sight of a common
Yahoo, than of my own person" (IV, 10; see also II, 3). Because he
will not look at himself, he forgets what he should know and what
the Houyhnhnms deny - the possibility of a complex being, both ra-

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 SWIFT AND THE HOUYHNHNMS 1167

tional and passionate. Gulliver comes to accept the Houyhnhnms'

identification of Yahoos and human beings.'8
When the Houyhnhnms force Gulliver to sea, he is picked up by a
Portuguese ship captain, Don Pedro. '9 Don Pedro is the successful
captain that Gulliver failed to be. But Gulliver's view of human be-
ings as Yahoos colors his appreciation of Don Pedro, an intelligent
man who tries to befriend Gulliver. Gulliver does admit that Don
Pedro's "whole deportment was so obliging, added to the very good
human understanding, that I really began to tolerate his company"
(IV, 11). Gulliver, of course, prefers the nonhuman understanding
of the Houyhnhnms. Don Pedro offers Gulliver arguments for
returning to his wife and children, arguments which Gulliver finds
too "tedious to repeat" (IV, 11). He does say that Don Pedro "put it
upon me as a matter of honor and conscience that I ought to return
to my native country, and live at home with my wife and children"
(IV, 11). Don Pedro evidently recognizes that man is not an
abstract being but one with connections to particular places and
people, one's country and family. He notes the impossibility of the
"solitary island" Gulliver seeks. It is fitting that Gulliver meets Don
Pedro after leaving the land of the Houyhnhnms, for Don Pedro il-
lustrates the error of viewing man as split between passions that
deserve to be exterminated and abstract reason. Moreover, his
friendship and benevolence contrast greatly with the treatment that
Gulliver has received from the Houyhnhnms.20 Don Pedro cares for
Gulliver, whereas the Houyhnhnms cast Gulliver out, to live or die
as he may.
When Don Pedro embraces Gulliver at their parting, Gulliver en-
dures the embrace "as well as [he] could," for he cannot bear the
touch or the smell of human beings (IV, 11). He reacts to all men as
18 See, for example, Gulliver's letter to his publisher, Sympson. The letter prefaces
Gulliver's Travels.
19 When Gulliver is rescued, he is wearing rather odd clothing, which he made
from the skins of various animals. He found that the Yahoos' skin, dried in the sun,
could serve as a substitute for shoe leather (IV, 10). He earlier planned to supply
himself clothes and shoes "by some contrivance from the hides of Yahoos and other
brutes" (IV, 3). He has carried out the less offensive part of the modest proposal: the
carcass of the child sold for food, according to the modest proposer, could be flayed;
"the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for ladies, and sum-
mer boots for fine gentlemen." Swift, "A Modest Proposal," 112.
20 Ross points out that Swift gives us Don Pedro, a kindly generous man, as a foil to
Gulliver's misanthropy. "Chapter xi," he writes, "is almost wholly a demonstration
that Gulliver is absurd in his blind refusal to abandon his misanthropic convictions,"
"The Final Comedy," 44. See also Williams, "Gulliver's Voyage," 283.

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 1168 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 43, 1981

he earlier reacted to one of the projectors in the Academy in Lagado,

who is covered with excrement. This projector gave Gulliver "a
close embrace" -"a compliment [Gulliver] could well have excused"
(III, 5).
Gulliver's life back in England appears ludicrous. In trying to
imitate the Houyhnhnms' virtues he has come also "to imitate their
gait and gesture" (IV, 10). He not only "trot[s] like a horse," but his
English "resemble[s] the neighing of a horse" (IV, 11). Even after
he is back in England for five years, the smell of the Yahoos con-
tinues to be so offensive that he "always keep[s] [his] nose stopped
with rue, lavender, or tobacco leaves" (IV, 12). Not surprisingly,
Gulliver cannot bear the touch of his wife and children (IV,11 and
12). He buys two horses which he claims "live in great amity with
me and friendship to each other" (IV, 11). His greatest pleasure lies
in talking to them. The man so adept at learning the languages of
men (I, 2; III, 1, 2, and 11) now spends his time neighing with
horses. When his cousin and publisher, Sympson, tells the reader
that Gulliver "lives retired, yet in good esteem among his
neighbors," Sympson is kinder to Gulliver than Gulliver is to the
human race. Gulliver's neighbors surely think that he has lost his
mind.

CONCLUSION: SwIFr's DEFENSE OF COMMUNITY

In satirizing Gulliver's love of the Houyhnhnms, Swift indicates

his criticism of philosophy to the extent that it leads to a denial of the
body and the passions in the name of an abstract universality.
Gulliver's tendency in this direction appears to be strengthened by
his reading of the Republic, which influences his imagination of the
Houyhnhnms. In admiring the city of the Republic, however,
Gulliver may be misinterpreting Plato's work. Socrates, unlike
Gulliver, cannot simply approve of the Republic's city and its
philosophic rulers. This city has no place in it for Socrates, who
pursues his quest for self-knowledge in what the philosopher-kings
regard only as a cave to be escaped. It is not the mature Socrates
but the young one who must be warned against concentrating on be-
ings which seem to be unconnected to the particular things in the
world.2' And it is the young Socrates whom Gulliver resembles.

21 Parmenides, 131a-135d. It is ironic that this warning comes from Parmenides

who asserted that the whole is one.

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 SWIFT AND THE HOUYHNHNMS 1169

Socrates's famous turn from natural science to political philosophy

suggests that he overcame to some extent the dangerous propensity
of philosophy that Swift criticizes-the inclination to turn away
from humanity in search for perfection (Phaedo, 97-100). Gulliver
seems less attached to his own than Socrates. Whereas Gulliver
wanders around the world, Socrates is famous for never leaving
Athens (Crito, 52a-c). And he claims to place his duties to his
fellow Athenians above his duties to strangers (Apol., 30a). The
"restless life" of Gulliver (II, 1) is modelled rather on the life of
Descartes who travels throughout Europe, "seeing courts and ar-
mies, living with people of diverse types and stations of life, [and]
acquiring varied experiences. "22 Descartes presents himself as if he
has no connection with anyone or anything particularly his own. It
is the peculiar "modern" bent of Gulliver that influences his reading
of Plato. To a man trying to conquer nature, the Republic's ra-
tional city is especially appealing, since that city attempts to con-
quer particularity-the body, the passions, and, in general, the
nonrational limits of human nature. Plato indicates the tyranny of
this project.
Like the philosophers of the Republic's city, Gulliver must be
"compelled" to return to human society. These philosophers,
Socrates says, will be laughed at when they have trouble adjusting
to the dim light of the cave (Rep., 517a). We suspect that Socrates
himself, a dweller in the cave, might also laugh at them. Swift, at
any rate, laughs at Gulliver when Gulliver has trouble adjusting to
human society. Throughout his voyages, Gulliver hates being
laughed at (II, 5; III, 8; IV, 8). His pride, which makes him a fit-
ting character in a comedy, isolates him from others and renders
him unfit to be part of a community. Swift seeks to arouse those
passions which bind men to one another. In his modest proposal, he
does so by abstracting from them and consequently calling them
forth. And in Gulliver's Travels he shows the folly of a man who
tries to stamp out those passions under the influence of a mistaken
notion of virtue and reason.

22 Descartes, Discourses on Method, 6.

This content downloaded from

47.29.229.128 on Tue, 19 Apr 2022 05:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms