By: Jorge L. Villate
Love, why do we one passion call,
When’tis a compound of them all?
Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet,
In all their equipages meet;
Where pleasures mixed with pains appear,
Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
From Cadenus and Vanessa
Contents:
[1] • Proem.
•The microscopic
perspective: Fear and power.
•The macroscopic
perspective: Boldness (confidence) and Desire (or The other side of fear:
reactive - active)
•The Ethereal
Perspective.
. - Laputa. (An
island on the air)
. - The lower
word perspective: The hidden history or The falling of idols.
. - The Chimera
of immortality.
•The rational
perspective (or our oldest and more cherished lie)
•The human
perspective (or The return to the Cave.)
Abstract: Against rationalist assumptions on human
nature, Gulliver’s Travels… offers a
trip through human passions to reveal how far are humans from being rational
creatures as it has been philosophically assumed. The set of passions embodied
by characters-symbols are shown in action through different perspectives,
assuming rational appearances and outcomes. All this leads us to question
whether reason is capable of describing and ultimately amending passions,
without becoming or discovering itself as the most powerful of them at once,
but not being ultimately more than “a slave of passions” or a passion itself.
Proem.
If Gulliver’s Travels into several remote
nations of the world [GT.
hereinafter] has some peculiar way to be read, it is because one need to read
the letter to “…his cousin Sympsom”[1] both as prolog and
epilog. The real meaning of this letter
as introduction to depict human nature, can be understood since the whole description
of human passions through the first three parts is completed by comparing two
kind of archetypal creatures: the brutal ones called Yahoos with this sort of
rational beings called Houyhnhnms, but having in mind all the previous
characters which represent distinctly some aspects of human nature mixed with
and comprehended from the usual assumptions or figurations that humans usually
have about themselves.
One of
the questions aroused when comparing such allegorical creatures between them
and to humans, and rereading all the G.T.
previous part is: How do supposedly rational beings, humans, are dominated most
of the time by passions barely indistinguishable from their thoughts and mind
(rational proposals: morals, aesthetics, politics…)? Is there any solution to
such muddle or there is more than that or even something totally different and
even worse? How to sustain still the fundamental Aristotelian assumption
–assumed by all the post Aristotelians and renovated by the Rationalism in 17th,
not without some doubts since 16th[2]– which defines humans as
rational animals? Is it Reason something essential to humans or it is just a
mere accident driven by passions? How could reason transform passions into
virtues or tame them if it is so seducible (manageable)? How to be so sure that
the so called virtues are not outcomes of any passion, and ultimately are
serving to it? Would reason have to seduce passions to dominate, lessen or tame
them? If so, would it be any other leading passion rather than reason as it has
been traditionally recognized and assumed? Ultimately, all these questions
drive us to inquiry about what it means to be human since reason had been
recognized until the eighteenth century as an important element at least of
human nature.
This
letter introduces Gulliver’s (G. hereinafter) doubts about his proposal to
amend humans, and ultimately whether humans can be called as such or they
better deserve the appellation of Yahoos
or even something worse. Curiously, G. doesn’t
refer directly to stories about “humans” (Europeans or British) through
all his writing, except to himself, who begins this travel just for his “…
insatiable desire of seeing foreign countries…”[3]
which could be interpreted as a desire of knowing different people or cultures
than of England and Europe.
But
this travel is only an attempt to describe deeply common passions inherent to a
wide gradation of ‘rational creatures’ facing unusual challenges, whose
rationality seems, on the one
hand, to vanish itself on Yahoos and to reach, on the other hand,
its highest level in Houyhnhnms, as
two-faces of an extreme representation about humans, which leads to question
why do Yahoos fit to humans so
disturbingly well, while Houyhnhnms attracts us so powerfully?
As
both character and narrator, G. himself and all the characters assume opposed
perspectives from passions to virtues: from fear to courage, from despair to hope, from ambition to
selflessness, from hatred to love, from lying-concealing to truth, and
ultimately from passion to reason and vice versa. His writing works as a mental
experiment which sets risky situations, amplifying some human features to
expose how characters display virtues, vices, passions, since facing unexpected (limit, extreme)
situations.[4] Therefore, all parts and characters
of GT. embody the interaction of passions and reason that leads to an incisive
description of human nature as essentially a passional one.[5]
Since
somehow referred to a historical background, the characters represent some
biographical references, but they aim furthermore to epitomize passions by
using psycho-physiological features[6] to show how passions work
not only as fuel of human behavior, but as a driving force. Such characters do
not represent people, though they could parody some concrete personage, but
embody human passions, to stretch or magnify them, especially their
metamorphosis to rational constructs (laws, customs, beliefs…). Just an example
is how Lilliputians laws are conceived to reinforce the Emperor's power, which
means to calm his fears and satisfy his unmeasurable ambition. The trail of
Hobbesian’ thoughts about how fear works as an essential part of human nature
are clear here, but G. does not quote Hobbes or any other modern author
directly as a philosophical background of his observations.[7] In fact, he seems to be only a curious
surgeon, deeply interested in knowing other countries, who eventually is driven
to describe human nature to ultimately help to change it.[8]
This
journey exerts a decisive turn in G’s life as a kind of initiatory experience,
giving him motives as well to imitate Houyhnhnms
as to reject Yahoos and even more to
consider humans as consummated Yahoos.
Thus, G. culminates his journey like a sort of prisoner, escaped from Plato’s
Cave, who has fallen in love with the archetypical virtues (forms or ideas) but
who is also committed to communicate them to whose that only can see and live
amongst shadows or distorted reflections of these virtues. So, the missive to
his cousin works both as an introduction and a conclusion to his journey
throughout human nature. In fact, it was supposedly written years after his
final return to England.
Therefore,
is it justified G. commitment to reform (reshape) humans through reason at a
sight of human resilience to remove passions, vices, and corruptions? Does it
only mean G’s total failure in such commitment or moreover the absolute
incapacity of humans for living rationally?
To
answer the previous questions and other ones, we will highlight G’s description
of passions in action. Our writing will not intend to discover the real keys in
Swift’s thoughts by comparison with his other works. Rather, it will study G’s
thoughts as if they were not a symbol or
Swift’s persona, but G’s opinions as a ‘real’ character –with his own life– who
is driven to question his assumptions about human nature.
• The microscopic perspective: Fear and power.
At a
first glance the Lilliputians' tiny world doesn't look dangerous or ominous,
rather, it looks insignificant, even cute, as usually happens when something
small is observed at a glance. What we call microscopic perspective refers to
how do Lilliputians deal with the unexpected arrival of such a giant creature,
who would watch them as if they were not bees, but microscopic creatures[9] fighting for imposing one
another and eventually attacking G, too. This kind of perspective (placing or
putting humans in front of themselves as if they had to deal with more powerful
creatures, humans in this case) makes human passions to emerge as the very fuel
of any behavior. Therefore, this is a privileged point of view to describe them
in action, which places a new perspective in Hobbes’ theory about fear, because
it changes lightly the terms of “…the natural equality of men…in their mutual
will of hurting” since G’s dimensions breaks any hypothetical balance of force
and consequently the configuration of fear. It is so formidable his strength
that exceeds overwhelmingly the equilibrium or balance of forces that supports
fear[10], before it becomes
religious adoration and/or reverential fear. Instead, G. rarely feels or acts driven by fear in
Lilliput.
The
Lilliputians size is only the special perspective conceived to highlight fear
as a common source of passions for humans facing formidable events such as
dealing with a sort of creature “…dropped from the moon, or one of the stars…”[11]; just a sort of demigod,
who would give them ambivalent motives either to admire or to fear or even to
increase their ambitions to manipulate him as a submissive servant or slave.
The polluted temple used to lodge G. –first as jail and then as residence–
epitomizes the compound of fear and amazement that fearful but aggressive
creatures feel facing deities, demigods or enormous beasts, which require a
special place to be dealt, but not to worship, because it was “…looked upon as
profane, and therefore had been applied to common use…” just to chain any of
them instead of venerating. Whether G. was considered a demigod or not, he
would have been chained anyway.
Lilliputians’
aggressiveness could be explained as an outcome of their inner and incurable
fear –almost paranoid-, which it is not only because of G presence, but for
their constant fear of any one as a potential enemy. They feel as if they had
to quarrel all the time and defeat their eternal enemies (Blefuscudians) to be
safe (secured), just as microscopic creatures feed incessantly itself from the
bigger ones, as Hooke had described by using his microscope.[12]
The
first challenge G. unexpectedly set before Lilliputians’ fear was how to deal
with a disproportionate alien –moreover if it looks so rational (smart) as
Lilliputians seem to be–, by suspending or reshaping usual legal and moral rules for calculating
how dangerous could be such a creature. For doing so, the Colonel uses bound
ringleaders as lab-mice pushed into G’s hand, just to observe and calculate how
dangerous he might be and the advantages and disadvantages of treating with
such a creature.[13] In the same way, G. would
not has been liberated so soon “… if it had not been for the present Situation
of things at Court…” just because he was wanted and required to be used as a
weapon against the Emperor's enemies.
Therefore,
being primarily an inexhaustible fear that drives Lilliputian Emperor and his
Council to exploit G’s strength, they manipulate him in order to definitely
defeat their enemies, vaguely promising liberty in exchange of being “… our
Ally against our Enemies in the Island of Blefuscu…”[14]
But
fear was soon complemented naturally
by the “unmeasurable … ambition” after G. seized the Blefuscudian fleet and
showed his potentiality as a formidable weapon, which however should be kept
under Lilliputian Emperor’s will. Even when G. was “… created a Nardac … which
is the highest title of honour among them…” it did not exclude him from
complying The Articles – which “… I disliked, upon account of their being too
servile…” – in order to recover his liberty.[15]
The
conditions under which G. is liberated were shaped to keep him as a docile
servant and powerful weapon at once. In the interim, just before ‘liberating’
him after signing the Articles, he was watched as an entertainer; just to
observe his capabilities without risking the King’s realm.[16]
But long before agreeing to liberate G, it was pondered profusely how to kill him
and eliminate safely his carcass.[17]
The
religious controversies and all the political rivalries show Lilliputians as
driven for fear metamorphosed in an insatiable desire of power (dominion),
which is epitomized in their endless inner struggles for power, rationalized
absurdly as religious and legal differences. These struggles show how absurd
can be people blinded by passions rather than guided by reasons. Even though
just rational arguments are used, they are distorted by fear and ambition,
which twist any sense of equity in the struggle for seeming truths. In addition,
it is not by chance that the Emperor and all his servants refer grandiloquently
to his realm and himself, so compensating their inner fears.
This microscopic perspective gives an
opportunity to observe and compare the apparently huge humans’ quarrels
(conflicts) with those corresponding to tiny creatures, almost insects, which
also fight for minutiae since this tiny world is described from a higher
perspective. The unusual G’s way of solving apparently that conflict by seizing
the Blefuscudians’ fleet, works as disruption in the usual order of solving
conflicts among aggressive and fearful creatures, who keep momentarily without
arguments to quarrel as usual, as a consequence of G’s unexpected actions.
Far of
placating fear and ambition by seizing the main part of Blefuscudians’ fleet,
G. displays such a powerful impression that awakes ambition, hatred and envy at
once[18]. Both fear and ambition, as
also hatred and envy, soon becomes an
exigency for seizing the remaining part of the fleet, just for “…reducing the
whole Empire of Blefuscu into a Province, and governing it by a Viceroy;…
destroying the Big-Endian Exiles…by
which he would remain the sole Monarch of the whole World”. “…so unmeasurable
is the Ambition of Princes…” that it exceeds any other passion except fear as
fuel of such ambition.
It is
noteworthy how fear generates other passions, not leading necessarily to
recognize reason or any agreement to achieve some kind of civil “commonwealth
by institution” or at least some compromise based on mutual recognition, but
the chance for a sovereign to reign through fear[19],
which eventually would generate hatred, ambition, lying, … So, Lilliputian Emperor’s “unmeasurable
ambition” is a consequence of deep-rooted fear, which surpasses any kind of
gratitude to G for risking his life “…when [it is] put into the balance with a
refusal to gratify their passions.”[20]
G’s
strength mixed with his refusal to acquiesce to the Monarch's designs to
enslave “…free and Brave People…” rises and discovers at once envy, hatred, and
ambition of his “…secrets Enemies…” who were running a plot to kill him. The
plot was so secret as passions that would support the Emperor's edict against
G.
The
interests of Blefuscudian Kingdom in G’s “…prodigious Strength…” and its
curiosity for knowing such strength would have awaken dangerous suspicions on
G’s loyalty to the Emperor.[21] As their Lilliputian pairs
did, the Blefuscudian ambassadors asked G. for entertaining them to observe how
useful he could be to their Emperor designs against Lilliput. So, as their
Lilliputians pairs, the ambassadors are also driven by the same passions and
goals than those.
As if not
all that were enough, G’s help for extinguishing the Palace fire by urinating
on it[22], contrarily to any
reasonable assumption, raises the Empress’ abhorrence and revenge instead of thankfulness
for preventing being burnt to its ground. This action would be accounted later
as delinquency to indict G, because it violated “…the fundamental Laws of the
Realm…”
A
special mention for showing how passions run under apparent rational
deliberations deserves the imperial Council hypocrisy when deliberating G’s
fate. By comparing G’s services to Lilliput with his supposed faults, shows
clearly the “unmeasurable ambition” leading the Emperor and his council’s
behavior as outcome of their continuous fear for losing power, each one of them
according to their hierarchical ambitions.
So,
they openly ponder how dangerous could be G. since his refusal to enslave
people could be a worrying and incomprehensible signal of putting virtues
(moral and/or rational values) above passions, just because all their thoughts
in order to keep power by subjugating other people are driven by passions not by
real morals. Even their science (mathematics) and technology function to
satisfy imperial ambitions since they are mainly intended for bellicose
purposes. [23]
Accusing
G. “…of high-treason…” through distorting facts, arguments, and retouched laws[24] to indict him, exemplifies
how his former “protector” – the Emperor – betrays G, since false testimony, malevolent
suppositions, ingratitude and lies are used to do that in the “Articles of
Impeachment against QuinbusFlestrin”. What really Lilliputians begin to fear is
G’s moral scruples – which works as deterrent to his passions (fears)– as
menace against Emperor’s designs for not attacking innocent and brave people,
and thus risking his life for apparently violating “Articles and Conditions” of
is liberty, where had been stated that “…He shall be our ally against our
enemies in the island of Blefuscu, and do his utmost to destroy their fleet,
which is now preparing to invade us.”
Probably, the most incomprehensible thing to
Lilliputians – and thus the most feared – was
why G. did not take advantage of his enormous strength to become himself
high-Admiral or help the Blefuscudian Empire to seize power.[25] All the “Articles and
Conditions” aimed to restrain and ultimately control such overwhelming
strength.[26] Certainly, it made some
members of Emperor’s council to conceive artfully an intrigue – just for
preventing any uncontrollable outburst – because they were projecting their own “unmeasurable
ambition” into the giant, so what they deeply feared were their own passions,
not G’s actually, though they could not see such passions as their own, but
ascribing them solely to G's intentions.[27]
The
Council meeting to decide G’s fate evidences how does hatred – motivated by
jealousness, envy, caprice … and ultimately Empress’ malice, but at the very
bottom by fear – move some members to propose stubbornly death penalty, while
the emperor seems decided to spear his life, but for no other reason than
weighing pros and cons of eliminating such a prodigious weapon. So, the Emperor’s
Chamberlain trays to mediate by proposing blinding G. instead of killing him,
just to show Emperor’s ‘mercy’ and mainly for satisfying his concern regard
blinding giant’s eyes “...would be no Impediment to [his] bodily strength, by
which [he] might still be useful to his Majesty.”
Even
so, these ‘reasonable’ ponderings only raises Admiral’s fury up, which serves
as catalysis to reveal his fear and Empress’ malice as “Reason of State”.[28] Therefore, the main
‘reason’ alleged –either openly accepted– was treason or, better said,
presumably treason, because there was no evidence of that, but just fear
fueling other passions. The Admiral, Bolgolam, feared to lose relevance as army
commander because of G’s portents. The Treasurer jealousy feared losing his wife,
who publicly had met G. in his lodging, but most of all his reputation, which
had been diminished much more for G’s promotion as Nardac (Duke), while the Treasurer was only Clumglum (Marquis). It is worth to note that Treasurer had tried
before to convince Emperor for dismissing G because he “… had cost his Majesty
above a Million and half of Sprugs
(their greatest gold coin, about the bigness of a spangle)…“[29] So, even the Treasurer's
financial knowledge is put to work by his envy and ultimately his fear to lose
ascendancy to the Emperor.
Regard
Empress’ malice against G, it could be seem as probable consequence of fearing
“…an Inundation … to drown the whole Palace…” and eventually being drowned by
his urine (or maybe something worst) of which she got a hint by “…dinning with
me…”, and watching him eating “… more than usual…to fill the Court with
Admiration.”
From
here it is clearer how G's account is a gradual disenchanting of Lilliput Laws
since they can not only be manipulated (distorted) by passions, but created
and/or conditioned by them, too. So, toughness of rules to punish treason,
lying, false testimony, and fraud can be more a result of desire for power
(fear and revenge at their very bottom) than of justice for establishing equity
and reason. Only so could be explained why the laws can be used to punish
innocent people and even more as a means of vengeance applied on people who
have served to power (government). Therefore, it is even clearer that any rule
could work as a disguise used by the desire of power (or anything else wanted,
hated or desired), and ultimately by fear of losing it.
Such
disenchanting makes itself visible in G’s account of “… such terrible Effects
of them [intrigues] in so remote a Country, governed, as I thought, by very
different maxims from those in Europe.”[30]
These maxims were distorted (denaturalized) as follow:
.- The
laws conceived to judge crimes against the State are usually applied to punish
its more capable and loyal servants, instead of rewarding properly their good
services.[31]
.-
Since “…choosing persons for all employments…” is based “… more regard to good
moral than to great abilities…”[32] the choosers basically pick
docile servants rather than efficient ones, because servility (blind obedience)
is usually conditioned by fear, which is exerted largely by the choosers. So,
virtues (Truth, Justice, Temperance) supported by servility could be easily
distorted (tricked) by passions at a sight of something wanted or feared. For
the absolutistic power acquiescence (blind obedience) is more important than
dissention, as it was largely attested by penalizing G. to be blinded for his
dissention. Good moral understood as obedience is preferred rather than sharp
intelligence, because the power could be tricked by a “… superior endowments of
the mind…” as G. shows by seizing Blefuscudian fleet instead of simply
destroying it; which would have been the easier way to serve Lilliput without
risking his life at once.
.-
Since “…the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man incapable of holding
any public station…” and “…Kings avow themselves to be deputies of Providence…”
any disrespect or disbelief to a King is alike to disown or disobey God, by
showing no fear to King or God. Therefore, it is an indispensable requirement at
least to show fear –the more the better- to hold a public position, because
fear guarantees obedience and no dissention. [33]
.-
Ingratitude, “… a capital crime…among them…”, could be used as a tool by
powerful people to judge, penalize and ultimately submit others, because the
powerful ones usually like to appear like the sole generous ones, as the
Emperor displayed artfully and his servants supported (corroborate) servilely
in G’s trial. Therefore, ingratitude is a role reserved to ordinary people, who
usually appear as the sole recipients of gratitude and are supposed to show
eternal gratitude, even when there was no reason for that, but just for the
contrary. Therefore, G is marked as an ungrateful person, who should be
thankful for being blinded and pierced by hundreds of poisoned arrows instead
of being burned alive. That way, gratitude is distorted by fear, just because
thankfulness becomes mandatory, since it is owed for fear to be accused of
ingratitude.[34]
Since
power is exerted from fear, it usually distorts values, virtues, and morals
giving way to a huge inversion – or even ethic destruction – where the usual
content of virtues, values, customs, and morals becomes mere pretenses to exert
power or satisfy the immeasurable ambition … Thus, the hypocrisy or double
standard empty values, virtues, and morals of their original meanings and makes
them masks, tools of fear and ambition at last.
Lilliput
looks even more like a parody – distorted version or masquerade – of Hobbesian
conception of the State in De Cive,
just a State built and managed from the original fear implied in Homo homini lupus est, and the original
state of war (nature), which undertakes, manages or seizes the sovereignty
ceded by men to preserve civility or so called state of peace. Thus, since
running education is a way to exert such sovereignty, the concupiscence as “...
great law of nature…”, destined to propagate human race through “…the
conjunction of male and female…”, is redirected by cutting any bond between
parents and their descendant in order to educate them, because concupiscence as
cause of tenderness could not be a valid principle to educate.
But
the question is, since tenderness is not a valid principle to educate, which
else could be? The rigid educational discipline described by G. is conceived to
obtain (produce) docile servants, rather than citizens under the rule of their
own consciousness, which means liberty. Even though “…They are bred up in the
principles of honor, justice, courage, modesty, clemency, religion, and love of
their country…”, and to “…avoid those early bad impressions of folly and
vice…”, these are not what precisely support council deliberations to judge G’s
actions, but fear to lose power disguised as legal precepts, perhaps because
tenderness tends to debilitate fear as principle of servile obedience.
An
elaborated cruelty, rather than supposedly “…majesty’s mercy…” and “…great
lenity and tenderness…” is what transpires from Emperor’s speech to announce
G’s punishment, just as a token of someone well educated in such educational
principles “… because it was observed, that the more these praises were
enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer
more innocent." Just for not being educated as courtier, G could not see any
mercy or lenity in Emperor’s announcement[35],
because it only could be understood by people to whom cruelty –as exercise of
want to power and punishment to any dissention- is a principle of governing
accepted as usual and more effective than real tenderness, lenity or mercy.
Such understanding could not be openly recognized as such, because the
Emperor's cruelty drives people to hypocrisy, which is supported by fear to
dare his authority and as a direct consequence of terrifying “… the people so
much as those encomiums on his majesty’s mercy…”
So,
Lilliputians' principles of education become soon discredited by the effects of
“…the dispositions of great princes and ministers…” As any other kind of tool,
the laws can be manipulated or used to reach opposite porpoises to which they
were conceived. Thus, looking for a solution to safe G’s life, “… Reldresal,
principal secretary (as they style him) for private affairs…” tries to commute
death penalty in exchange of putting “…out both your eyes…” At a first glance
it looks reasonable (less bad), but it only shows how fear transmutes itself in
a “balanced solution”, since G’s guilty is never directly impugned –which had
supposed facing more powerful fears –, but accepted from the assumptions of a
servile servant –whose rivals he tries to diminish– to whom liberty is an
unknown concept, but fear a very known passion which reaches its climax by
delivering a crueler solution: starving slowly a previously blinded G, just to
use gradually his diminished strength in the meantime. From here, it is tough
to know whether it was better facing a quick death or agonizing until finally
dying.
Though
Reldresal’s proposal of blinding the giant intended to save G’s life, his
intentions would not be considered without a reasonable doubt about his further
purposes of keeping a decisive ally in the enemy field (Empire), who might
decide future events.[36] Moreover, it was ultimately
fear to risk his position for being considered a traitor like G what prompts
him to do that, but he thought equivocally it was mercy and friendship.
If
blinding G. rather than killing him immediately could save his life, on the
other hand, it would make G. a dependable tool, easily controllable. But
Reldresal’s fear doesn’t appear as such publicly. It is a reactive passion
which seeks to discharge inner tension through customs socially accepted, ergo,
disguising itself as justice, lenity,… virtues at last. At least it could be
said that he sought a compromise whereby G would have to sacrifice his eyes to
keep himself alive until he had been starved and finally killed.
Gaining
time seemed to be the Reldresal’s stratagem to warn and somehow suggest G.
escaping to Befluscu, whereupon the secretary would have in G. a strong ally in
the ‘enemy’ field. So, fear, interest, and ultimately ambition seem to be his
main motives, not compassion, mercy or friendship. By saving G’s life or at
least for warning him, Reldresal guaranteed a strong ally to himself and
debilitated at once his opponents in the royal council, while all of them had
created a formidable enemy. By leaving “…to your prudence what measures you
will take…” it was more than probable that G. would leave to Blefuscu and
probably he would return the fleet to the Blefuscudian, for Reldresal knew G
had obtained Majesty permission to make this trip and had been eagerly invited
to do it.
G’s
“…many doubts and perplexities of mind…” does refer to the whole situation,
including Reldresal’s mediation, because he “… could not discover the lenity
and favor of this sentence, but conceived it (perhaps erroneously) rather to be
rigorous than gentle…” Though G. does not suspect openly about Reldresal
intentions, his doubts include the extreme harshness of his supposed lenity.
Therefore, fear drives both his enemies and ‘friend’ alike to use respectively
law as a tool of fear, envy, revenge, and ambition. But fear and ambition
disguise themselves additionally as lenity and friendship, while envy and
revenge use bluntly fear to declare G. as a traitor.
At the
bottom of Emperor’s resentment against G. lies what at a first glance seems
only fear to his strength, but such resentment shows itself as “justice”
(masked vengeance) through a refined cruelty, thought to provoke a calculated
panic in his servants rather than recognition of his benevolence, but appearing
as virtuous person for its supposed mercy or lenity for apparently forgiving
G’s life and punishing justly his supposed crimes. Since virtues are socially recognized as
valuable rules, they are more appreciated for those passions – fear, vengeance,
ambition, cruelty, concupiscence… publicly repudiated, but privately blessed–
which need virtues to disguise themselves for acting in public.
The
accusers finally appeal to the Emperor’s and Council’s inner conviction to
substitute proofs for fearing to G’s portents, presented as convictions to
condemn him rather than merits to be praise: his strength begins to be feared
by all of them since it could be exerted from dissention as a result of putting
his moral scruples above any previous compromise.[37]
So, his dissent against fear and immeasurable ambition, which works as an
attempt to dominate them, is the real issue condemned.
So,
the “Articles of Impeachment against QuinbusFlestrin, (the Man-Mountain.)"
is the most elaborated example about how fear, hatred, envy, and ambition can
distort laws, but still keeping a solid appearance of legality. It sets a
problem not only for G. but to anyone who would have to deal with laws, ergo,
every one. The problem is how laws -being rational constructs aroused
ultimately from fear, but enacted to presumably control fear-, could be further
distorted by the same passions they try to control. It looks like a vicious
(eternal) circle that is the nature of passions (essence).[38]
Equally important, if not more, than people think upon where maxims, rules,
laws and morals lead them is where their passions drive these norms, because
what they really mean will be decided for the kind of passions that generated
and drive them.
The
accusers finally appeal to Emperor’s and Council’s inner fears to present G’s
portents as proof of conviction to condemn him instead of praising them: his
strength begins to be feared since it could be exerted from dissention as a
result of putting his moral scruples above any previous compromise. Those
accusers knew very well that people are usually more inclined to punish than to
reward or to thank because they are prompted mainly by fear rather than other
passions as love, desires, concupiscence, which could be eventually consequence
of fear.
For
Lilliputians, fear is the most powerful passion, which metamorphoses in and
feeds itself from incommensurable ambition (desire of power), avarice, hatred,
jealousness, cruelty, mendacity, hypocrisy,…[39]
But not only fear, but all of them usually distort laws, maxims, customs, …
which ultimately are either directly or indirectly driven by fear. Both fear and immeasurable ambition tend
essentially to set an unlimited and mutual feedback. So, it sets an essential
difference between the Emperor and his servants, on the one hand, and G. on the
other hand, about how fear works. While G fears being enslaved (submitted), the
Emperor’s fear looks for enslaving
(submitting ) as many people as he could.[40]
As
well as the desire of liberty and sense of justice compels G. to dissent from
Emperor’s designs of enslaving his opponents, fear to be considered a slave
again makes G rejecting Blefuscudian Emperor’s proposal for being at his
service and fully protected for “… I resolved never more to put any confidence in
princes or ministers, where I could possibly avoid it … [to] be an occasion of
difference between two such mighty monarchs …”[41]
His collaboration to make peace between these two countries was another motive
for hatred by Bolgolam and the Treasurer, because they needed war to keep their
respective positions and increase their reputation. G. was feared and hated by
being at once peacemaker and enormous menace dreaded by Emperors, their
ministers and courtiers.
Being
a disruptive element between these Kingdoms, the Befluscudian Emperor was
gladly pleased of knowing G’s proposal for departing to his country, just
because he knew Befluscadian’s version of what had happened in Lilliput. So, G
would be an uncontrollable physical force and source of dissention and
disturbance against the main goal of both Emperors: destroying and enslaving
each other. As peace could not be imposed unless it was really wanted “… both
empires would be freed from so insupportable an encumbrance...” to restart
their conflict without any interference and feeding back their mutual fears.[42]
So,
G’s function as a distention force is definitely destroyed by identical
disposition to quarrel and dominate both in Blefuscu and in Lilliput, driven by
the unavoidable fuel of all human actions in both reigns: fear.
• The macroscopic perspective: Virtues and Desire (and The other side of
fear: reactive - active)
The
upside down of G’s experience in Brobdingnag turns abruptly into fear just as
Lilliputians had felt for him. As well as G. seemed a demigod to Lilliputians[43]Brobdingnagians seem a “…prodigious race of mortals…” to him.
However, there is a difference that sets an inverse proportion between Lilliputians’ bulk[44] (smallness) and their
immeasurable ambition, great cruelty, and self significance[45].
Since G. tries to set a relation between creatures size and reason, by which
“…reason did not extend itself with the bulk of the body…”, he could not assume
that little creatures would be smarter than the bigger ones just because their
bulk . His own account about human affairs denies his groundless assumption, as
it is shown by the Brobdingnagian King’s sharp judgment about “…the most
pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon
the surface of the earth.”[46]
So,
passions are not proportional to the bulk of any human being, and following
“…that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison…” it could be
said that passions are usually more uncontrollable since people feel menaced
and therefore more fearful, be they Lilliputians or Brobdingnagians.
However, there is a fundamental difference
between Lilliputians’ fear and G’s fear. The first one could be called reactive
as it comes from fear to lose power and leads to subjugate others by any means.
Fear to lose power acts from an extreme feeling of impotence or vacuity which
constantly needs to reassure itself by conquering and subduing anything useful
not only to keep but to increase power (assurance)[47].
Thus, it could explain how fear to lose power usually projects itself inversely
as vainglory or overvaluing its own strength. Under such fear, liberty and all
values and virtues are distorted by being subordinate to reassure power as it
is shown in all conditions of G’s letter of liberty.
Therefore, the want of power looks in Lilliput as a kind of insatiable desire
understood as “unmeasurable ambition”. Its reactivity could be better
appreciated when it is compared to G’s fear to lose liberty (or being enslaved)
which is rooted in respecting liberty based on natural rights (Laws) and
committed to preserve his own and others liberty, rather than acquiescing
monarchs’ caprices, which means not being managed as slaves without rights,
subjected to will, caprices or passions of others, and eventually to their own
as we'll see later.
Compared
to Lilliputians and G., Brobdingnagians, instead, look like
stars or planets, driven by other passions than fear and ruled by regularities
(laws) as planets usually do.[48] Their passions and virtues
seem so far away from human nature as planets are from Earth. So, G. is forced
by circumstances to adopt what I call the macroscopic perspective, which
attempts to get closer to distant but gigantic creatures and make visible
(comprehensible) their driving passions to a much smaller scale dominated
basically by reactive fear. If Lilliputians had found “… some nation, where the
people were as diminutive with respect to them, as they were to me…” probably
they also had behaved as they did regard G., because their highest passion was
fear to lose the power (to be insignificant).
G. is
forced to change his human perspective to evaluate such gigantic creatures,
because contrary to their size, they do not act “…as human creatures are
observed to be more savage and cruel in proportion to their bulk…”. At a first
glance, curiosity seems to be the first feature G. notices when he is captured
by a peasant, who keeps astonished for finding what seemed “…a small dangerous
animal…” who seemed to “… pronounce articulate words, although he could not
understand them…” Only after giving to him convincing signals of being “… a
rational creature…” it was clear they could communicate with one another and so
to satisfy the peasant's curiosity.
The
first scared reaction of farmer’s wife “…at the sight of a toad or a spider…”
was quickly substituted for an extreme tenderness to G., just a kind of
transitional feeling which usually grows in people who feel themselves powerful
or at least self-confident. Moreover, they delighted seeing G. eating, which is
a very important feeling, usual to people deeply happy (strong, powerful, and
secure of themselves). By contrast, Lilliputians “…were highly delighted at
this mark of … clemency…” just for feeling relieved of not being crushed by G.
Instead
of assuming a servile attitude in front the farmer as a consequence of his fear
mixed with astonishment, he shows “…presence of Mind…” by adopting a “…
supplicating Posture…” which is not cowardly or servility, but the usual
reaction to keep safe oneself in front of overwhelming and unbeknown powers. It
would be a temerity (suicide) to fight or struggle against such a giant, and
usually temerity is consequence of not “…presence of Mind…”, weak animus or,
better said, cowardliness or lack of judgment[49];
contrarily, G. shows dignity even until being ridiculous by defending human
honor against overwhelming circumstances that exceed any probability of being
successfully faced. It shows that what G. calls human honor is mainly supported
by passions rather than reason or common sense.[50]
Having
escaped from slavery in Lilliput, G. ironically ends being enslaved by a
farmer, whose greed (avarice) and a miserable advice led him to exploit such
“…a strange animal… exactly shaped in every part like a human creature…” as if
he was not human at all, but a talking tool, ergo, a slave. Avarice blinds the
farmer to respect G’s humanity, because he had given the farmer several proofs
(signals) of being even more human like anyone, just by showing an acute and
communicable sense of humor for “…laughing very heartily...” at the Master neighbor’s spectacles “… for his
eyes appeared like the full moon shining into a chamber at two windows…” It
motivated to this shortsighted and “…great miser…” person to exert revenge by advising
the farmer to expose G “… for money as a public spectacle, to the meanest of
the people…” and thus awakening Master's greed for exposing hazardously the
“strange animal”, though by his “… own interest would not suffer anyone to
touch me, except my nurse…”
If
avarice had driven the farmer[51] his daughter, by contrast,
was driven by a sort of infantile sense of maternity and ultimately real
affection to her believed baby toy, even more than she had professed to her
lamb.[52] So, G begins to be treated
like a newborn, who needs to be educated, dressed, fed, and even named as she
does by naming him manikin (little
man), while he names her Glumdalclitch
(little nurse). However, while Glumdalclitch became more affectionate, his
father got worried about selling G at a sight of his quick deterioration as a
consequence of traveling and exposing ceaselessly such rarity.
And
so, as a rarity, he was sold to the Queen, who was “…surprised at so much wit
and good sense in so diminutive animal.” Just her curiosity introduces the
quest about G’s humanity as per Brobdingnagians’ standards. So, G is observed
and evaluated as a diminutive animal[53]
like he had done to Lilliputians before.[54]
At a
first glance he seemed to the King “…a piece of clock-work…”, but since he
heard G’s rational accounts and answers to his questioning, his perplexity grew
to such a grade he decided to call scholars to investigate what kind of
creature was G exactly. Curiosity works here as the first step of the
insatiable desire of knowledge the King shared with G, though none of them knew
yet this coincidence, and how many discrepancies they would have ahead.
At
scholars opinion G was nothing more than ReplumScalcath
(LususNaturae: a freak of nature),
which “…could not be produced according to the regular laws of nature…because
[he] was not framed with a capacity of preserving [his] life…” and therefore
could not be classified as per Brobdingnags
conception of humanity, which only required physical and physiological
features, not rational or emotional abilities[55],
because these latter were thought as “instructed” (induced) by the farmer as
usually it is done to animals destined to entertain[56]
It was the King who searched for rationalities in G. at the sight of his
scholar disagreement regarding his nature and their doubts about his supposed
rational abilities.
G.
feels being watched as a tiny creature, as he had watched Lilliputians before,
though he never had doubted their human nature, meaning their rational ability,
most of all to plot against him. The macroscopic perspective applied to observe
such kinds of giants is inversely proportional to the microscopic perspective
used to watch Lilliputians. So, G.
feels questioned and diminished his honor as a member of humankind since being
watched as a rare creature, doubtfully rational.
Once
the King is convinced by himself of G’s authentic accounts and his rational
nature, there began a very fruitful inquiry in human features about which G
tries to illustrate proudly to the monarch, based on the idea according to what
“…nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison…”[57],
just as means to magnify human features for compensating the undeniably sense
of impotence G felt facing such an oversized world.[58] His tendency to magnify (exaggerate) the
European civilized wonders, makes him give ideal accounts of England politics,
history, government, and customs for supposedly preserving and enhancing “…the
honor of my country...”, and for demonstrating rational abilities out of reach
of any “diminutive animal”.
But
the King could not take G’s depiction of European customs but as a risible
example of “how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be
mimicked by such diminutive insects …” So, the philosophical principle of
proportionality is relativized by insinuating that passions (pride, ambition,
fear,…) are not proportional to the bulk of any person but a constant in any
human being whatever his size be, though they could be aggravated (intensified)
since any servile person fears to be displaced of his believed or real duties
or being diminished for any reason.
The
courtier dwarf exemplifies “…how contemptible a thing was human grandeur…”
because even he was considered human by Broabdignagnians’
standards[59], he felt a deep resentment
to G. “…at seeing a creature so much beneath him …” His resentment could be
explained (is motivated) just for not being as small as G. and ultimately for
having been ignored (displaced) as the Queen’s (Court) favorite. Therefore, he
felt himself as a diminished buffoon (slave), who struggled for retaking his
place as favorite servant through such perfidious means[60]
that G’s life was compromised at least two times, by using trickeries to
pretend doing mere jokes instead of tenebrous (mortal) tricks. Fear to be
ignored, resentment, malice, jealousness and envy meet in this character to
underline how dangerous (coolly explosive) could be a servile servant displaced
of his believed or real duties or favors. Servility in this case displays its
noxious stuff.
Another
kind of fear is what G. feels for being a creature so diminutive, constantly
menaced by insignificancies coming from people of bigger bulk. His size gives
him the opportunity to experience what is intangible at simple sight, as sun
dots or moon holes usually are unless observed through a telescope. So, G. can
not only watch but hear, smell and even defend himself from flies –their
excrements and spawn–and also from wasps' ferocity. However, while the Dwarf’s
desires aim to be a more valuable (servile) servant, G. wants to be recognized
as rational and smart as per Brobdingnagians’
standards. The Dwarf is a slave at heart for being a slave of his own
passions. He has renounced his dignity as human. On the contrary, G. endeavors
to be honored as human, though he would have to struggle with his own and
other’s passions to try to be recognized as such.
The
dwarf's and insects’ passages emphasize something subtle announced in the
King’s response to G’s narration of Europe’s customs; that is, how proportion
can be understood through disproportion, and vice versa. It could be called
Proportional disproportion or Disproportional proportion, which matches with
the equivalence between microscopic and macroscopic perspectives, perhaps an
echo of Nicholas of Cusa’s Coincidentia
oppositorum. The King’s response makes G. to rise to a more comprehensive
perspective[61] from where he could assume
gradually a deeper view of humans’ passions, which will conclude finally under Houyhnhnms’ influence. However, this
gradual assumption is not exempt from not understanding why having such princes’
qualities the King does not seize all the power, as European Princes used to
do.[62] So, principle of proportion
does not precisely works as G. had stated to justify his own worth because the
King’s qualities, talents, and his
subjects' veneration do not give way to what G thought would be the
proportional or logical outcome of such features in making a monarch the
“…absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people.”
Additionally,
there is an irony or self parody on proportion principle which proposes to
correct geographers by recognizing G’s supposition of a “…vast tract of land (Brobdingnag)…” between Japan and
California, supported in “… that there must be a balance of Earth to
counterpoise the Great Continent of Tartary: and therefore, they ought to
correct the maps….” So, principle of proportion is shown (parodied) as mere
speculation (hypothetical principle at most), which might fail both in moral
and science.[63] Therefore, proportion could
have only a limited scope to understand nature, human nature and customs
(moral), unless it were filled with disproportions, which is obviously a
rampant irrationality more compatible with passions instead of reason.
Having
to deal with such a disproportionate world, G discovers gradually by his own
experience how humans tend naturally (instinctively) to look for proportion,
just for making this world familiar to their physical and mental scopes.
However, looking for disproportions is also a human feature based on passions
since proportions become a sort of bird cage, overproportional in this case,
which could assure vital securities, but not coping real life, primarily driven
by passions whose essence are disproportions. G’s trips through Brobdingnag in
a cage gives him a privileged point of view to describe imbalance (instability)
between proportion and disproportion, and how proportion is only illusion or a
kind of perspective –surrounded by disproportions, with disproportion as
background – which looks for rationalities where hardly can be find it.
As
well as G could observe Brobdingnagians’ disproportions
regard himself and humans in general, the King could detect from his moral and
physical superiority how disproportionate was human pride (passions) compared
to its real scope in humans, and ultimately how they are subdued by passions
even when they think being led by reason. It applies not only to the physical
world but mainly to the moral or passional world, to which could not be applied
rational principles to calculate or even describe links between passions, and all kinds of rationalities derived from
them, because passions do not seem to have limits. If human size, strength,
physical and intellectual power can be measured, passions are immeasurable, as
it is shown by the “unmeasurable ambition” and “ridiculous… comparison” between
human scope and its pride (passions). Lilliputians’
incommensurable ambition, fear, violence, and cruelty compared with the
scarce presence of reactive passions in Brobdingnagians’
behavior shows how the principle of disproportionate proportion (or
proportionate disproportion) works. This comparison can only be settled through
a microscopic-macroscopic method (observation, perspective), which allows
exposing the paradoxical nature of human beings by comparing them to stronger
human creatures, as it happened to Lilliputians
regarding G. and to him respecting Brobdingnagians.
The
description of G’s adventures in Brobdingnag
shows the nature of its inhabitants, featured mostly by epicurean feelings
instead of reactive passions, just as if their strength and solitude (absence
of enemies or rivals) had supported joyfulness as primary feeling instead of
fearfulness or boredom. Even what is somehow disagreeable for G. results in joy
for Brobdingnagians, including when
he enjoyed as dinner an unconcerned linnet “…seemed to be somewhat larger than
an English swan…”, which had boxed boldly him, hurting more his prideful
presumptions about self-significance than his body. So, his supposed dignity
(pride) seemed also hurt for being used by maids of honor “…like a creature who
had no sort of consequence… on purpose to have the pleasure of seeing and
touching…” and “… lay [him] at full length in their bosoms…” The Brobdingnagians Ladies do not fear
enjoying sensuality (carnality) within a very new experience with a creature
out of their bulk, who doesn’t reject plainly such sensual games except because
he could not stand “…the very offensive smell…” of these Ladies, which seemed
“…much more supportable, than when they used perfumes…”, and ultimately because
he could not enjoy such sensual affairs alike maids did.[64]
Unlike
Brobdingnagians[65],
Lilliputians education rejects any
kind of sensuality (joyfulness)[66], just as token of their
fear of debilitating obedience to the Emperor as primary principle, though it
paradoxically transforms sensuality in cruelty as shown through the whole trial
and final sentence against G.
Unlike
Lilliputians, most of the Brobdingnagians use G. for amusement,
which shows a kind of special joyfulness and sensuality as intrinsic part of
their life, not subordinated to any moral rule, except their custom for
reciprocal enjoyment of corporeality (nature), which obviously could not be
enjoyed by G. because of his acute senses and his little size. As a “…creature
who had no sort of consequence…” G. is neither slave nor servant, but an
exceptional guest –at any rate innocuous– eager to show his talents and somehow ready to share corporal pleasures
alike maids used to do. However, disproportion –as impediment for enjoyment–
could not be experienced by them as source of unshared amusement and of G’s
unpleasant experiences “…because [his] littleness was beyond all degrees of
comparison…”
Even
though G. had been considered like a toy between such gigantic creatures, most
of them treated him respectfully, though not having in mind hazardous
consequences of disproportion for his littleness. The most powerful and
respectable creature amongst them, the King, shows the kindest treatment despite his severe but
exact judgments about G’s prideful accounts of European customs, as well as his
occasional hilarity for G attempts of polishing (healing) his damaged pride as
when he was captured by a monkey, which strokes and feeds him like a “…young
one of his own species…” instead of ripping his body apart. His pretensions for
illustrating the King could be understood as an intent to restore his
supposedly stained honor[67] even before the monkey
episode.
But
for establishing a link between body size and reason, according to which “…
reason did not extend itself with the bulk of the body…” – because “…the
tallest persons were usually the least provided with it…” – G. discovers
himself trying to compare in vain to taller creatures ruled by different
proportions and passional experiences which affect humans in a different way.[68] So, when G tries to
illustrate the monarch by idyllically picturing government and political
matters in Europe and England “…that might deserve imitation…”, he does not
obtain any response except deep practical questions and piercing judgments
aimed to unveil some uncontrollable passions as fundamental components of human
behavior.
King’s
questions aim mainly to ask about the dark side of any Government, that is,
what role play passions and vices in promoting its members in all its branches
and in managing its internal business; how does justice work; how is managed
the Treasure (public treasure); what are the leaders’ customs and hobbies; how
do laws are interpreted and applied.[69]
As per
G’s account it might be inferred a strong desire of acquiring and keeping power
at any price as the most conspicuous feature in humans, which usually represent
itself legitimized as virtues rather than passions. Thus, ignorance, idleness,
ambition, and ultimately fear, drive to distort laws and virtues, so their
contents and aims –which is justice, perfection, or supreme good (Summum bonum) – are replaced by
illegitimate personal interests and ambitions. By applying commonsense to G’s
narrative, the King discovers his proud partiality, but most of all fear and
unmeasurable ambition as real fuel and aim that actually moves human behavior.[70]
Far of impressing positively the
King through an idyllic but foolishly biased account of human affairs[71], G. hardly escapes of being
considered as part of “…the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that
nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth…” However, his
eagerness to emulate Brobdingnagians by
showing his humanity and illustrate the King beyond his “…narrow principles and
views” in politics, leads him to offer the most destructive weapon to obtain
more power by using force: gunpowder. So acquainted was ambition to G’s
comprehension of government and politics that he did not realize the King’s
harshness to judge his accounts aimed much more to discover features of human
nature than its episodic weaknesses.
It was
so much his eagerness “In hopes to ingratiate myself further into his majesty’s
favour…”, that G. forgets that Brobdingnagians
were not interested in expanding their realms beyond their intended
seclusion, because any other creature would be worthless to them, except for
being an object of curiosity, as the King showed by having G as a rarity. They
had no enemies, secrets of state and ultimately fear, therefore they did not
need to disguise their passions in distorted rationalization. It is not that
passions were unknown to them[72], but they tended to
cultivate virtues (perfection) along with the natural joy of life as a
reasonable way of living.
The
King does not feel desire of becoming “… absolute master of the lives, the
liberties, and the fortunes of his people…” just for being founded in “… the
knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, […] common sense and reason,
[…] justice and lenity, […] the speedy determination of civil and criminal
causes…” Whereby G. ends paradoxically
proposing to the King almost the same Lilliputian
Emperor’s proposition for enslaving free and brave people which G. had
rejected to avoid becoming “…an instrument of bringing a free and brave people
into slavery…”
Much
more than G’s behavior in Brobdingnag, his accounts display
features of human nature, which are wisely assessed by the King. However, his
behavior is driven by fear to be insignificant and consequently to defend his
“honor” –just a false perception on what is worthy and valuable –, which can
corrupt even the deepest believing in human dignity until impeding to recognize
that such desire of power at any price is an overreaction against fear to be
insignificant and it beats under the desires of being significant and can
distort virtues – so becoming vices –
until the extent of transforming the desire of serving (veneration, respect,
perfection) in servitude. G. shows a
recurrent feeling of human beings insignificance by facing the immensity of
nature –specifically man facing outer space as Pascal states[73] -, but especially referred
to an imagined gigantic race of humans symbolizing perfection as the orbit of
planets represents the unmovable fulfillment of an inner and eternal law, which leads living cycles and
rules everything in nature.
Contrary
to G’s expectations of being
recognized as worthy as Brobdingnagians[74], his proposal of
facilitating the King access to unlimited power by using gunpowder as weapon,
makes the King summarize briefly what could be considered essentially human: an
“…impotent and groveling an insect …” who “…could entertain such inhuman ideas,
and in so familiar a manner, as to appear wholly unmoved at all the scenes of
blood and desolation … of those destructive machines…” Though G. does not want power itself, he
typifies the feeling of human insignificance (fear) as fuel of unmeasurable
ambition, which he believes erroneously a feature shared between humans and
giants. Instead of professing any “… mystery, refinement, and intrigue…” or
unnecessary secrecy for governing, the King preferred “…common sense and reason
… justice … lenity…” and “… speedy determination of civil and criminal causes…”
as a political tool, which is a way to build a durable civility, and shows
courage –or at least absence of fear to lose power– as motive of his preferences.
Since
humans learn and behave through comparing themselves to other people or things,
it shows a radical feeling of insecurity (a mix of fear and desire of imposing
oneself), metamorphosed as competitiveness, survival instinct or state of war,
as ultimate foundations of human nature.[75]
Lilliputians and G. himself evidence fear as fundamental passion, though the desire
of knowledge works more radically in G. as a more powerful passion than fear.
Only when he sees himself overwhelmed by giants’ superiority, fear momentarily
owns him. However, he behaves with Lilliputians
alike the giant King behaved regarding him. Somehow, G. could be considered a virtuous giant regarding Lilliputians, though he uses his
physical superiority for fulfilling his compromises of favoring one of the
rival kingdoms against the other one, but just without knowing the real scope
of Lilliputian emperor’s ambitions.
The enormous advantage given to him by his colossal strength is not an inner
source of ambition, cruelty or fear. Lilliputians’
fear makes them morally small creatures driven by desire of power
(unmeasurable ambition) and all the other passions and corruptions, while Brobdingnagians’ size represents and
supports preponderance of virtues. Just as littleness works as a symbol of
lacking virtues, bigness does as plenitude of virtues.
The Brobdingnagians comprehension of
decadence or weakness of “species of men” presumes a supposedly pristine status
of perfection or at least of superior strength, which is broken for unknown
causes, giving way to decadence or fall from this primal status.[76] The giant race, as per its
moralists’ accounts, had debilitated themselves because “… the very laws of
nature absolutely required we should have been made, in the beginning of a size
more large and robust; not so liable to destruction from every little accident
…”, which sets a thesis as per which littleness, physical, and even moral
decadence are linked to natural decadence, which is doubted by G. because there
is not sufficient ground to charge nature for human decadence “…rather matter
of discontent and repining, from the quarrels we raise with nature…”, quarrels
that “…might be shown as ill-grounded among us as they are among that people.”[77]
Instead
of charging humans for their own decadence and failing to dominate their
passions, the King states corruption or passions as the very human nature. So,
G’s account of England history in the sixteenth century is judged by the King
as “…the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness,
cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could
produce.” It is not that giants did not have passions, but somehow they could
restrain them as they do to their prejudicial opinions.[78]
Like any other human race, Giants have passions, but they can restrain or
dominate them because they know the devastating consequences of driving reason
to servitude by passions and provoking all kinds of confrontations, usually
tragic ones, as civil wars between Brobdingnagians
had largely shown.[79]
Though
Giants seem a very resilient race against passions, they are not totally immune
as it is showed by the farmer avarice, the public execution of a murder, and
inner conflicts driven by “...the same disease to which the whole race of
mankind is subject; the nobility often contending for power, the people for
liberty, and the king for absolute dominion.” However, their laws and wisdom[80] had “happily tempered” such
disease, achieving a relative peace by setting “…a general composition…”, and
finally keeping the militia “… in the strictest duty…” by setting it “… with
common consent…” which could represent a sort of fulfillment of Hobbesian state
of peace, but supported by Giants’ moral feature of achieving and keeping “…
common consent…” as the foundation of their humanity.
It
seems that the most conspicuous Brobdingnagians'
feature is keeping their word or, better said, assuming their passions
sincerely, without need of deceiving about their desires through any moral,
legal or ideological disguise. It is noticeable that G. does not make any
reference to lying, fearing or ambition as Brobdingnagians features,
while some Lilliputians did not cease
of machinating to keep G. as servile servant, then to indict him by distorting
legal proofs, and finally to starve him surreptitiously.
That
moral stature really matter is a truth that G. experiences as a rare limbo in
between serfdom, slavery, eternal guest, and entertainer, definitely treated as
a curiosity, which could not be catalogued as human as per Broabdignagnians’ standards. Even though he had struggled for
demonstrating his human nature and for barely upholding the “dignity of
humankind”, the results did not get other outcome that being defined as
“…impotent and groveling… insect…” belonging to “…the most pernicious race of
little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the
earth…”, though his continuous travels could hardly have excluded him of being
influenced entirely by such “…little odious vermin…”[81]
Although
G. was in much better condition than usual captives were, recovering his
liberty became a growing desire of being ‘human’ again “… without fear of being
trod…” both physically and morally. He missed human nature (condition) for
being incapable of imitating giants in any aspect and for failing miserably all
intents of impressing them. Interacting with giants remembers him how miserable
human condition appears since compared to exceptional creatures, be real or
symbolic ones, even if rationality was showed as a distinct or exceptional
human feature, but definitely so “…blurred and blotted by corruptions…” alike
the original institution (Legislature) “rationally” engendered.[82] However, G. could not see
his circumstance but as affront to
“…dignity of humankind…” not really intended by anybody, though it would be a
more than probable setting for being a rarity without any chance of interacting
as per giants’ physical and moral standards. There had been humiliation if G
had been purposely mistreated. Except the farmer –whose avarice drives him to
exploit such oddity– and the dwarf –whose moral dwarfism did not allow him
being more than an envious buffoon –, the rest of characters take good care of
G, but obviously, he wasn’t capable of improving his human nature –both
physical and moral – to giants’ standards.
• The Ethereal Perspective
.-
Laputa. (An island on the air)
Laputa
represents (symbolizes), so to speak, a new kind of passion, the passion for speculating about
impractical (absurd) topics[83] –but having appearances of
true urges or needs – which comes from “…fear and disquietudes”. It might be as
strong as any other passion, leading people even to neglect their own body and
any others ordinary or “common actions”[84],
as if they were living in ethereal bubbles for mistaking reality with
impractical abstractions or ideas (projects) with ridiculous outcomes.
As any
other passion, speculation is characterized by “…continual disquietudes…”,
“apprehensions” or “disturbances”, but its motives are centered on very distant
and frequently false problems or questions. However, it seems to give Laputians some kind of infantile
pleasure[85], which could work as
twisted succedaneum “…for the common pleasures and amusements of life.”
The counterbalance and consequence
at once of these speculative
and interminable escapes of reality is the Laputians’
wives and daughters' custom of picking liberally gallants and flirting
openly with them, even in their husbands or
fathers’ presence for being “…so rapt in Speculation…” that their women prefer
escaping from Laputa in the arms of
any footman and even being despised and mistreated rather than coming back to
the flying island, where usually they “…are allowed to do whatever they
please…”.
Far from being reasonable people, Laputians usually engage in limitless
disputes due to the impossibility of paying attention to any proof for checking
their speculative theories or opinions. Therefore, speculating and disputing
have become vices (passions) instead of means to reach agreements to solve any
question, even though it were by recognizing common ignorance about some
topics. So, the King usually takes extreme decisions when “suppressing
insurrections” or getting his proposals done, but
only since the safety of the Island is not at risk. It is contradictory that
being a very cultivated person in astronomy, math, and music the King is not a
conciliatory one guided by reason or common sense to solve any dispute or
rebellion in his realms. Fear of improbable
events makes him not taking due care of his subjects’ claims and needs, except
to repress their rebellions, mutinies or resistance to pay tributes by
depriving them of sun and rain, and consequently starving them “…by keeping the
island hovering over…” cities or towns.
The contrast between speculation
and common sense makes it clearer
that speculation is an unfruitful outcome of what could be hardly called
rational exercise without any reference to experience. Usually, speculative opinions
are driven by fear, obstinacy … (passions at last), and ultimately by an
unlimited desire of nothing for speculation does not tend to prove its
statements, but to assert them by supporting indefinitely opinions in other
opinions. It seems like the highest fruit of reason, but at the bottom it is
nothing else than some masked passion. Thus, it cannot solve any dispute; on
the contrary, it feeds itself from engendering endlessly disagreements and
theories upon highly improbable and impractical subjects.
Laputians' speculation is supported by fearing to face
reality, which is substituted by imagining very remote perils, aiming to
infinite and uncheckable goals[86] (subjects, matters,…). They
are incapable of figure out any reachable objectives (limit, boundary …) aimed
at specific goals, be right or wrong, true or false, but always delimited and
ultimately provable.
Since it is applied
to solve practical problems, speculation
becomes disastrous, getting surely twisted and
useless results. It is even worse than speculating about remote subjects for
leading into surrealistic projects, which become absurd experiments and
regulations.
As a
flying city, Laputa symbolizes
absurdities and obsessions of a speculative mind neglecting its body (Balnibari), but governing its body by
exerting a heavy (negative) pressure on it until the extreme of fabricating
libels to pursue and defame people who do not obey or follow governors’
unrealistic projects.[87] So, its real purpose is
ruling, leading, governing, and dominating. Speculation is only a way of
dominance by setting absurd “…new rules and methods of agriculture and
building, and new instruments, and tools for all trades and
manufactures…”, pretending improve
everything, but just impoverishing people, while giving themselves long terms
to bring “…these projects… to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole
country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without foods
and clothes.” It shows how speculation (speculative goals, bad theories,
utopias) can subdue science by putting it to serve the desire of power. It
would be innocuous if it were not stubbornly imposed to reality “...driven
equally on by hope and despair...” Speculation could have a reactive side by
reacting to what is familiar in reality (customs, traditions, beliefs …) but it
apparently seems (pro) active for the innovative and “…innumerable other happy
proposals…”, all unrealistic, included in its theories.
The
Academy of Lagado experiments
underline the surrealistic essence of speculation applied to perform “happy
proposals”, especially the “…project for improving speculative knowledge by
practical and mechanical operations…” This experiment shows speculation as the
craziest pseudo intellectual passion (just a vice) replicating indefinitely
itself by fabricating all kind of supposed rational discourses throughout
mechanical operations to increase endlessly speculative books written by even
“…the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily
labour … without the least assistance from genius or study.”
As any
other vice or passion, speculation drives to madness and eventually to tragedy,
but in this case it is emphasized its particular tendency to suppress
ridiculously itself by suppressing any kind of verbal communication by showing
things instead of using words, which is also a veiled reference to the
consequences of an extreme nominalism.[88]
Every passion eventually becomes tragic or comic or even absurd, because it
tends to be either excessive or defective by definition, but only vices as
uncontrollable passions are actually extreme.[89]
As usual in GT, almost all the characters and their circumstances could be
described through inverse proportionality between appearances and reality. So,
at a first glance Laputians,
especially their superiors and soldiers, seem very
ingenious, kind, and neat, but also bellicose people because, as they try to
apply their schemes to real life, they become avid seekers of gains and power, supposedly
prompted
by good intentions.[90]
It is evident “… in the school of
political projectors…” how speculation could have a special branch to apply
literally the same medical prescriptions to cure and preserve healthy both
human and political bodies for keeping “...a strict universal resemblance between …”
them. The extreme absurdities, in this case, fill the role of intending to
purge both human and political body from their typical diseases, but it also
could drive to paranoia, as it is showed by intending discover and prevent “…
plots and conspiracies against the government…” examining circumstances as
“…the diet of all suspected persons… times of eating… which side they lay in
bed… which hand they wipe their posteriors… a strict view of their excrements…
[to] …form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men are never so
serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool, which he found by
frequent experiment…” Thus, anyone might be accused and convicted of plotting and conspiracy, supported in pseudoscientific
suppositions and assumptions, whereby they become dangerous tools to restrain any disobedience and
ultimately impose the will of any authority, which is supported basically by
all these absurdities.
Once again fear appears at the
bottom of passions. In this case, speculation is the way through which fear,
ambition, and desire of power exert their control and eventually create
apparent rational constructs.
.- The lower word perspective (The
hidden stories in history or The falling of idols)
As
usual in GT, the contrast between
apparent opposite human perspectives that we have called respectively ethereal
(speculative knowledge) and subterranean (“lower word” or hidden history) is
used to demystify false assumptions about science as speculative and submissive
knowledge, history as vainglory or absurd veneration for past, and immortality
as false hope based in fear to death.
After
leaving Laputa, G. meets in Glubbdubdrib historical personages died
a long time ago, just to discover history as a gallery of misinterpretations, falsehoods,
inaccuracies and injustices. Far from being an edifying teaching, the real
stories narrated by their protagonists show that passions, rather than moral
rules, have been the real impulses inciting people to act. It would be said
that G. is driven by the passion of knowledge to watch the hidden stories of
history led by the “…insatiable desire I had to see the world in every period
of antiquity placed before me…” [91]
The voyage to Glubbdubdrib (Island of Sorcerers or Magicians) works as an introduction to question the desire of
immortality in the next chapter. What would be
worth in history, since the past recounted in this island by its protagonists'
real testimonies means that those stories believed as truth or even venerated
as such would become probably very relative, different or contrary to what they
seemed or had been narrated by disciples, chroniclers, and historians? Would
it be worth living a life full of false accounts?
Especially modern History appears mainly as a very false account of what really
happened, where “…the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe
the greatest exploits in war, to cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools;
sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to betrayers of their country; piety,
to atheists; chastity, to sodomites; truth, to informers…” Thus, historical
accounts involving illustrious protagonists are usually a consequence of human passions more than of reason or common sense. It
is not because greatest virtues had been absent from history, but for having been attributed to the wrong people and
consequently corrupted or diminished alike facts and protagonists.
Both historians and protagonists
share frequently the same passions, weakness and vices (false pride), and most
of all they tend to falsify and misinterpret (distort) events from their own
perspectives (passions), even more when protagonists, biographers and/or
historians are the same persons. So the limits between assumptions and
prejudices in historical accounts are much more uncertain than it is thought,
since they usually are mostly guided by passions rather than reason or common
sense. It is highly significant that only the lower world could be a reliable
source of historical and real moral knowledge “…for lying was a talent of no
use in the lower world.” Passions have nothing to do with this world because
there is no life, actions or “reasons” to lie.[92]
Whatever
are causes of misinterpretation, history shows itself more than any other as a
field subject to human weakness and consequently it could not be a trusted
source of exemplarity or guides for life. That way ancient models could not be
recognized anymore as a source of moral guide for human life. G’s insatiable
desire of knowing the past is somehow tempered by lowering his unfounded high expectations
of finding moral heroes in the past.[93]
Talking directly to some protagonist or chroniclers
would be sufficient to question history as a source of moral guide. So, Alexander the Great did
not die poisoned, but by excessive drinking; Caesar and Brutus appear “… in
good intelligence with each other…” being Brutus not a usual villain (traitor)
but a virtuous Roman; Senate of Rome appears like “… an assembly of heroes and
demigods…”, while “… an assembly of somewhat a later age… a knot of pedlars,
pick-pockets, highwayman, and bullies.” For having “… so horribly
misrepresented the meaning of those authors to posterity…” Aristotle and
Homer’s commentators were unknown to both of them, and vice versa, because they
tried to keep themselves distant from these authors, instead of looking to know
them better or even rectify their statements.
Respecting
new systems of nature, Aristotle states its relativity as any other human
knowledge founded either in mathematical principles or human senses, which only
could bring “…new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those, who
pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles, would flourish but a
short period of time, and be out of vogue when that was determined.” Thus, all
systems of nature founded in rational (metaphysical or mathematical) principles
are subject to be outdated, contrarily to philosophers’ aspirations to absolute
truth, as Aristotle indirectly recognizes.[94] Why does it happen is a question that G could
not answer until knowing Houyhnhnms.
Even
though G. finds truly (moral) models in Caesar, Brutus, Hannibal, Julius,
Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the younger, Sir Thomas More, Homer, Plato, and
Aristotle[95] … the prevalence of
passions (vices) and corruptions is definitely a trend increased along modern
history, but also abundantly present in the ancient world since passions were
profusely examined by several ancient philosophers and writers and “…grown so
high and so quick in that empire [Roman], by the force of luxury so lately
introduced…”
Therefore,
all kinds of incontrollable passions or vices are equally common to ancients
and moderns, whereby there is no ground to consider moderns in any respect
superior than ancients. But considering that ancients were less corrupt than
moderns seems to G. something plausible as corruption becomes usually deeper
instead of lessening along the history. So, corruption in imperial Rome looks
deeper than in Roman republican period as a result of “…the force of luxury so
lately introduced…”[96], as well as corruption
looks less deeper in Ancient Rome than in the modern world, though in either of
them loyal servants have been finally despised and “… represented as the vilest
of rogues and traitors…”, which shows constant ingratitude in all times.
Under
the experience of Laputa and Balnibarbi G. introduces an indirect
questioning about human rationality, which is acutely examined under the Houyhnhnms’ experience, where
Aristotelian man’s definition as rational animal –since it was formulated and
latter reformulated by the modern rationalism– is strongly questioned.
.-The
Chimera of Immortality.
G’s
voyage to Luggnagg opens an inquiry
on immortality apparently far from questioning history, but both matters are
connected since death (aging) and history are both consequence of any (living)
temporal process, and immortality as fame (celebrity, historical prominence,
illustrious personages) could be considered as victory on death and oblivion.
So, the desire of immortality could be considered as a consequence of fear to
die and as unrealistic as only could be any desires or passions driven by their
essential trend to ignore natural limits. The supposed “… great happiness and
advantages of immortal life…” are so important to any human fulfillment that
only a deity could give it, but it looks as if Luggnaggians do not worship any god capable of doing so or at least
do it by keeping the everlasting youth at once.
His
unrealistic vision of immortality makes G. formulate a “scheme of living”
grounded in the unlimited duration of life as if life in general and his own in
particular were not destined to decline or even degenerate. So, by
“…understanding the difference between life and death…” G. aims to “…procure …
richness…”, “…apply … to the study of Arts and Science…[and]record every action
and event…” to become a sort of “…living treasure of knowledge and wisdom, and
certainly become the oracle of the nation.” Paradoxically, G’s desire of
immortality aims to watch everything becoming, changing, degenerating, and
eventually disappearing, except him. His passion for immortality does not allow
him to realize that any human body – including himself – is subjected to
decrepitude as anything else is, even if it had been awarded with immortality,
like Struldbrugs were.
There
is no change in nature aimed indefinitely to perfection, because nature works
cyclically, and the human body is not an exception. If dying is impossible for Struldbrugs, only endless decrepitude is
what is left to them. Even when immortality could be thought as something
exceptional but even so natural, the desire of immortality could not be
attributed to nature as a whole but only to human nature as a consequence of
fear of death, which is solely a human feeling.[97]
So, the desire of immortality is a kind of false belief or delusional desire
originated by one of the more powerful human passions, which is fear of death,
which cannot even distinguish between immortality and everlasting youth. It is
noteworthy that neither Brobdingnagians or
Houyhnhnms feel any kind of fear,
thus they are rarely inclined to conceive false beliefs.
Since
“…long life [is] the universal desire and wish of mankind…” it is supported by
fear of death, which does not realize if it is worth to live endlessly without
everlasting youth at once. The desire of living at any cost, even in the worst
circumstances, does not realize how useless is wanting immortality because
endless life would intensify only our natural decadence, not our real or
supposed virtues.
Struldbrugs’ aging shows G’s desire of immortality
expressed in his system of living as “…unreasonable and unjust; because it
supposed a perpetuity of youth, health, and vigour, which no man could be so
foolish to hope, however extravagant he may be in his wishes…” Therefore,
immortality would be a disgrace rather than a blessing because it would imply
to “…pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age
brings along with it…” But the desire of immortality or desire of living
endlessly is so strong that even men usually prefer to live a little longer
though such disadvantages may be abundant, “…except [they] were incited by the
extremity of grief or torture…”
Immortality
itself does not guarantee anything else than endless worsening of human
corruptions, infirmities, passions, and limitations rather than some kind of
improvement of human nature.[98] The Struldbrugs’ aging accounts given to G. describes perfectly how
humans usually age. There is nothing different in them except unlimited
duration of lifetime, which worsens follies and infirmities for “… the dreadful
prospect of never dying…”, especially their envy for “…the vices of the younger
sort and the deaths of the old...” So, they envy exactly what mortals usually
want and fear more, respectively[99]. Their envy is only
surpassed by their avarice, which if it were not deterred by tough laws “…those
immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the
civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of
the public.” Inasmuch as “… avarice is the necessary consequence of old age…”,
the Struldbrugs would become
increasingly much more miserable than mortals without being satisfied
ultimately.
However,
humans do not usually care if corruptions and vices intensify for aging; what
really matter to them is the prospect of immortality naively mistaken with
everlasting youth, which G. regrets for “…the pleasing visions I had formed;
and thought no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with
pleasure, from such a life.” After this experience, fear of death switches to
fear of endless decrepitude, both moral and physical, whereby neither death
itself would be anymore the most feared disadvantage or immortality the most
wanted feature.
• The rational perspective (or our oldest and more cherished lie.)
Until
now G. did not have any point of comparison to compare directly humans to any
other creature in his voyage, just because Lilliputians were so small,
Brobdingnagians too tall, Laputians excessively
speculative, and Struldbrugs very
unfortunate immortals. Apparently, the principle of proportion is used once
again to compare creatures called Houyhnhnms
(the perfection of nature) and Yahoos
(an odious animal), but breaking any possibility of equalizing their
features as they represent virtues (reason, common sense) and vices (passions), respectively. The comparison in this case
makes sense only since comparing both of them to humans is represented by the
latter as a matching point, though actually nearer to Yahoos than Houyhnhnms.
Reason
(virtues, common sense) and passions (vices, brutality) are represented
exclusively (antagonistically) by these creatures, who do not share anything
except their mutual contempt and occasionally fear, but it makes G. questioning
what is really rational in humans under Houyhnhnms
sharp suggestions, and ultimately how to define humans given their
similarity with Yahoos. But, the most
piercing matter for G. would be his purpose of improving humans by spreading
within them Houyhnhnms’ morals[100] by struggling with the
indelible Yahoo trends both in
himself and in those humans whom he would have inevitably to deal.
Part
IV basically resembles a kind of maieutic style of displaying what essentially
humans are and do. Through Yahoos clinical
depictions and Houyhnhnms’ acute
judgments about humans, it is gradually established a lively picture about
passions in motion. There is not mostly a moral judgment but a kind of
anatomical procedure displaying human passions as if they were muscles, veins,
bones, and tendons concealed by a colorful skin, which works as G’s first
accounts of human affairs to Houyhnhnms,
including his defensive hesitations before giving an exact account about such
affairs.
At a
first glance Houyhnhnms and Yahoos seem brute creatures, but only
the second ones show brutality as essential to them, while Houyhnhnms seem to embody common sense or a kind of reason hardly
mixed with passions, which can be cultivated in order “…to be wholly governed
by it…”[101] Not having any inner trend
toward vices or even any slight idea about passions makes reason a kind of
natural endowment to them, almost an infallible sense of justice, which means
to judge rightly according to natural rules ordered to correct any breach in
their customs or simply to guide ordinary life.
G’s
Master shows this infallibility by discovering passions (vices) as the main
drives of humans (though usually covered with rationalities or figurations) by
comparing human actions to Yahoos’ usual
behavior. However, his Master cannot catch initially the“…perfect human
figure…” in a Yahoo male when
compared to G. because of his clothing and dislike for Yahoos’ food.[102]
G’s
dislike for Yahoos works as common ground for establishing initially empathy
with his host, but such dislike is supported in “…horror and astonishment…” for
watching his amazing resemblance with this “…abominable animal…”, without any
noticeable difference with them at first, even though G. considers himself
between “…greater lovers of mankind at that time…” and Yahoos as part of mankind.[103]
However, G. was not very sure whether such animals were part of mankind,
neither his Master about G’s kin because of his clothes, which he thought were
a corporal extension of G’s body.
At a
first glance Yahoos look physically
similar to G, but they behave so detestably impudent that he cannot see some point of resemblance
to his civilized behavior and his Master seemed confused respect G’s kin,
because he did not doubt at all whether G was a Yahoo, but what kind of rare Yahoo
he was.
This
first comparative encounter with Yahoos is
only the initial step for G, his Master, and ultimately all the other Houyhnhnms in a long process of
realizing not only similarities between human and Yahoos, but also human’s upgrading of Yahoos’ brutality for using reason to intensify (aggravate) the
passions (avarice, lust, envy, desire of power, fear,...) shared by all of
them. If Yahoos are incorrigible
creatures, who could not have been educated or at least tamed by Houyhnhnms, humans will be revealed as
creatures whose cultural and social context only intensifies their common
features with Yahoos. So, if there were not essential differences between
humans and Yahoos, humans would be
reasonable only in a very questionable sense, it would say, only to intensify
and upgrade their pristine brutality.
As per
G’s initial appearance in front of his Master, he was not different from Yahoos, except for rejecting Yahoos’ food, his clothing, and for
giving signals of detesting them. Moreover, using an alien language to communicate
was an intriguing sign in a supposed Yahoo,
who also shows capable of learning both native and foreign language, which
means capable of communicating beyond the narrow limits of corporal signals.
All this amazed Master’s family “…for they looked upon it as a prodigy, that a
brute animal should discover such marks of a rational creature.” capable of
communicating ideas, feelings, concepts, and experiences.
The
Master’s eagerness for knowing how such unmistakable Yahoo was teachable,
clean, and civilized only increased his doubts about G’s nature -and also on
his convincement about “…some glimmerings of reason…” in him[104]- just because of an
incidental discovery of G’s nudity, which momentarily convinced the Master of
his truth Yahoo nature. But then, G.
gives another hint of human nature by explaining his needs for clothes “…as
well for decency as to avoid the inclemencies of air, both hot and cold…” and
“…not expose those parts that nature taught us to conceal…”. What looks obvious
and absolutely reasonable to G. is discovered as an unnatural trend “…to
conceal what nature had given…” no having any reason then for being “…ashamed
of any parts of their bodies…”
It is
obvious how the natural need to protect the body is rationalized as moral
matter within the human tendency to conceal or lie. Humans need clothes as
unnatural covering to protect their bodies because these clothes do not allow
showing humans bodies as they really are. So, there is an essential human need
to conceal the body. Concealing in this case is not an exception –as it is for
Houyhnhnms[105]-, but a basic rule of
human survival connected to lying, which also would prevent exposing the human
body to usual concupiscence or, on the contrary, it would allow exposing some
appealing parts, just to provoke lust, envy, courtship, awe...[106] Therefore, clothes could
be considered as disguises, or even tools, which work both to conceal and
ignite passions at once. Even though they conceal most of the human body for
presumably protecting it against both elements and concupiscence, it just makes
the body paradoxically more desired. Just for not knowing all these customs of
covering the body and the passions implied in doing that, G’s Master could see
clearly the incongruities of a presumably rational being guided by something so
called decency and/or shame for its own nudity.
Just
for counteracting his undeniable corporal likeness to Yahoos, G. states openly humans' rational nature to differentiate
himself from Yahoos’ “…degenerate and
brutal nature…”, so promising at once to tell his Master about human wonders
such as their skills to make ships and to govern.
Hearing
G’s statements “…with great appearances of uneasiness in his countenance…” for
feeling that G. was telling “…the thing which was not…”, which distorts
ultimate goals of any speech what is “…to make us understand one another, and
to receive information of facts…”, his Master defines what lying means without
having any previous concept or experience about it, except its negative
definition (saying “…the thing which was not…”) but setting what it would be
understood hereafter as truth, and discovering lying, disguising and falsehood
as essential human features, absolutely opposed to G’s account of humans as
rational beings.
Since
reason aims to truth and lying distorts the right sense of any speech, humans
are not really endowed mainly with reason but with other powerful trends
(passions), which usually distort any attempt of being rightly understood
because they struggle for imposing each other rather than establishing facts or
real understandings. It would explain why humans generally would need so many
words, more to confuse than to clarify.[107]
So, the usual goal of any human argument could be to make believable
what-is-not instead of showing or seeking the truth, because any question has
at least (two) “both sides”, and to make
believable implies somehow imposing a particular point of view and defeating or
assimilating another at once by using arguments. Any conviction implies
struggle within an argumentation, and therefore supposed winners and losers.[108]
Establishing
the truth for humans is not usually a point of reason, but of passions because
what leads to conviction are arguments whose actual weight is pondered out of
term of truth or false, though it seems all the contrary. Since “reason taught
us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we
cannot do either. …” the higher point “… a creature pretending to reason…” can
only reach is to set “…conjectures…”, not properly truth and even less trying
to impose or present such conjectures as if they were the ultimate truth,
either speculative or practical.[109]
On
this basis G’s account to his Master about how were employed Houyhnhnms in his country discovers at
least human ambiguity when giving trustworthy accounts. First, G gives an ideal
story describing humans as if they were Houyhnhnms’
docile and loving keepers, which leads his master to think wrongly “…that
whatever share of reason the Yahoos pretend
to, the Houyhnhnms are your masters…”
It is not clear what compels G to tell the darker side of this story, but his
account surely shows how the truth can be distorted by simply concealing some
facts. Probably fearing to displease his Master compels G to conceal part of
reality at first, but his further account about horses' treatment by humans
provoked “…great indignation…” and “…noble resentment…” followed by judging
humans as not having “… the least tincture of reason, any more than the Yahoos in this country…”
Moreover,
humans are so weak compared to other animals and scarcely apt to survive by
their plain body and instincts that they hardly could employ reasoning to
compensate for such weakness.[110] Compared to other animals,
especially Houyhnhnms, the human
ill-contrived body does not seem designed to be governed by reason or for
“…employing that reason in the common offices of life…”, even incapable of
curing “…that natural antipathy, which every creature discovered against us;
nor consequently how we could tame and render them serviceable.” Therefore, if
humans had some tincture of reason, this would be useless for the overwhelming
need of caring themselves and the consequent fear derived from it, which would
chain essentially reason to fear, since living in constant fear is the main
human feature.
Not
having experiences, words or ideas to describe or simply name human vices and
passions[111], the Master unfolds an
impressive comprehension “…of what human nature…is capable to perform…” guided
by passions as consequence of human corporal weakness, which promotes dominance
of mendacity, desire of power, cruelty, egoism …over reason, but most of all
fear as an essential human feature.
Through
G’s description about causes or motives of wars it is stated how avarice, fear,
opportunism, desire of power, envy, treason, hatred, bias … passions at last,
move people to quarrel[112]; but his Master attributes
it ironically to “…effects of that reason you pretend to…” and that G. had
proudly called “…the general reason of mankind…” But it would be “…happy that
the shame is greater than the danger…” if this ridiculous reason would not
produce so disastrous wars by devising and using lethal weapons, which provoke
huge loss of lives instead of a few ones, because if the human body were
naturally capable of producing some mortal wounds, it were not capable of
killing massively by its only own strength.[113]
Therefore,
much more than unreasonable (irrational) is such supposed reason in humans
since it is corrupted by passions and in return it intensifies their malice to
produce “…such enormities…” until such a degree that it would be almost
impossible to call it reason instead of “…some quality fitted to increase our
natural vices …”[114]
It is
pretty obvious for G’s Master that those trends called vices or passions are
more powerful than reason, because there is always one of them driving the
rest, despite G’s struggle for curing himself helped by creatures who do not
have nothing to do with the most powerful passions, though they feel deep
hatred to Yahoos and love to his
country. So, while G feels gradually
less tempted to lie and to let passions drive him, he feels more inclined to
imitate Houyhnhnms maxims.
Since
the laws are usually explained by G. as the pinnacle of human rationality,
supposedly “…intended for every man’s preservation …”, his Master questions how
they “…should be any man’s ruin …” But the most piercing question is why (how)
a supposedly rational being would need to create other rules than reason and
nature as guides for “…showing us what he ought to do, and what to avoid.” The
Master did not understand how twisted (unnecessarily complicated) and simple at
once is human nature, since laws are intended to rule by imposing a particular
sight about right and wrong, good and bad, fair or unfair…
Rather
than explaining why laws lead man to ruin their lives instead of preserving
them, G. tries to describe how humans seemingly use reason to guide their
lives, but the only outcome of such an attempt was his Master’s sharp
questioning regarding passions using reason to get what they want (need) and to
drive humans.[115] Humans use reason, but
just founded in their passional nature, which means that passions use both
reason and humans as a whole. So, those supposed servants of the law use reason
through “…practice of law …” to probe “…by words multiplied for the purpose …”
not what is just, but “…that white is black, and black is white, according as
they are paid …” It would say that defending falsehood at best is their
specialty, rather than defending clients (causes) on just basis (“…truth and
equity…”). Perhaps the laws could be just or unjust, but the “…practice of
law…” distorts any sense of justice or rationality, confounding “…the very
essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong…”[116]
But
even worse is when twisted judgments become legal precedents, malpractice
becomes part of established interests, and judges “…are picked out from the
most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all
their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of
favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression.” Mainly guided by avarice, laziness,
fatigue or incapacity, at the bottom is fear “…by doing anything unbecoming
their nature or their office …” what really guides all the judicial branches
and lawyers in general. So, lying becomes vice, which usually corrupts “...
every other subject of discourse as in that of their own profession…”
preventing that such prodigious minds could be used to instruct “…others in
wisdom and knowledge…”
If Houyhnhnms,
who embody virtues, epitomize the rational perspective, it is not without some
traces of passions, as it will be analyzed later. However, Houyhnhnms and Yahoos give
G. two extreme but essential points of comparison, which usually coexist
unbalanced in human nature: reason and passions; virtues and vices, because the
passional side tends to prevail over its opposite. Neither Lilliputians nor Brobdingnagians
embody such features to such a pure degree as Yahoos and Houyhnhnms do.
Therefore, they both neither pristinely reflect human nature nor a point of
view which could be independently used as absolute reference to define it.
As a
kind of Kantian creatures, whose passions barely interfere with reason, Houyhnhnms do not need to dominate passions,
though they feel “violent hatred” (aversion) to Yahoos and love for their country. They cannot understand most of
the human passions for not being capable of feeling most of them, however, they
can describe perfectly Yahoo (human)
behavior just because, on the one hand, they hardly could suffer these
insufferable creatures and thus detest (hate) them, and on the other hand, they
are aware of human incongruences by knowing what rationality really is. All
this sets both enough distance or estrangement and proximity at once, allowing
to describe such behavior almost dispassionately.
So,
for instance, understanding avarice is almost impossible for his Master because
as any other passion it exceeds all kinds of moral and natural harmonies,
equilibrium, limits or boundaries, which characterize Houyhnhnms’ rational behavior. The “unmeasurable ambition” is shown
as avarice regards money or some other goods.[117]
Since
avarice is ultimately a consequence of fear for not having “…enough of it
[money] to spend, or to save…” it comes from a reactive sentiment (resentment)
which is fear-to-not-have-enough, not from active ones which could be joy and
generosity. This feeling of fear is so rooted that it is almost impossible to
placate by giving any amount of goods to “…make a few live plentifully…” But if
it is added caprices (rarities) to the desire of quantity, then avarice appears
more twisted than it is by itself, because “… in order to feed the luxury and
intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females…”, there will be
necessary to waste uncountable sources of goods usually neglected to supply
many people’s natural necessities.
The
ultimate source of Masters’ difficulties to understand humans’ customs is
plainly stated in Houyhnhnms’ beliefs
that since “…nature … works all things to perfection…”, there is no reason for too many humans
getting sick easily.[118] If nature works to
perfection, humans seem to work backward by eating incompatible foods when not
hungry, drinking very strong beverages (liquors) when not thirsty “…which
disposed us to sloth, inflamed our bodies, and precipitated or prevented
digestion…” It shows not only how natural instincts are corrupted in humans, so
becoming vices, but also how the whole natural tendency to perfection is
distorted. Following this natural tendency becomes impossible for human
passions, because their essence is going-beyond-any-limit, without knowing ever
completeness (totality).[119] Therefore, what humans have
always thought as natural, ergo, passions, are really unnatural, because nature
could not work against itself since it “…works all things to perfection…” and
perfection means harmony, intelligibility, and ultimately completeness.
However,
curing such physiological consequences of passions is even worse than the
diseases themselves, for relying on speculative principles invented by
physicians, who make the human body work unnaturally and invent imaginary cures
for imaginary diseases, both outcomes of the twisted nature of human actions
driven by speculation as a passion.
Their
skill to predict death is only matched by the ability “…to approve their
sagacity to the world…” even if it supposes using “…seasonable doses…” to
fulfill their own fatal prognostics. However, this late ‘service’ is very
appreciated by princes, “…great ministers of state…”, “…eldest sons…”, and
“…husbands and wives who are grown weary of their mates…” Therefore, medical
(mal) practice is a consequence of applying speculative principles to cure real
or imaginary diseases intending to either cure or intensify them.
In
this way, medical practice becomes a tool to serve the chief minister’s
“…violent desire of wealth, power, and titles…” which brings lies to a higher
pinnacle than any other human passion, converting such practices in a component
of political intrigue and treachery either to hold or acquire more power. The
desire of power is so powerful that it dominates “…joy and grief, love and
hatred, pity and anger…” and eventually spreads to others.[120]
However,
since the desire of power recedes as a driving passion in nobility, the
aristocracy becomes gradually weaker for being driven by “…idleness and
luxury…” which finally leads to diseases and ruin. Even worse than such
decadent “…illustrious body…” is that “…no law can be enacted, repealed, or
altered…” without its consent, so spreading decadence (“…imperfections of his
mind…”) through its decisions on laws and possessions.
So,
G’s country – England in particular, but also Europe, both considered at first
as epitome of any human culture, which means epitome of reason – is definitely
pictured as a kingdom driven by passions and vices rather than reason and
common sense, predisposing him to “…view the actions and passions of man in a
very different light…” through
a kind of catharsis, which cleans passions, false pride and affections, and
convinces him “…of a thousand faults in myself, whereof I had not the least
perception before…”. Having in front his Master’s example to detest “…all
falsehood or disguise…”, the “…truth appeared so amiable to me, that I
determined upon sacrificing every thing to it.” It is noteworthy that while Houyhnhnms cannot share nor understand
human passions, especially what falsehood and lying are, G. begins to hate such
passions as outcomes of his false concept of honor and dignity[121], though it does not impede
him giving a plain account of the mechanisms and consequences of passions.
Thus,
G. begins a path to amend himself by imitating Houyhnhnms, which later he would commit to apply to his kin. This
path is guided primarily by his Master inquisitive questioning, which prevents
G. of saying “what is not” about the supposedly wonders of England and Europe
and then for the sharpest comparison between humans and the odious Yahoos. But even though fear, shame, and
regret seem to drive G’s catharsis, it is “…love and veneration…” what
ultimately drove G’s to imitate Houyhnhnms. The
proposal for staying in Houyhnhnmland forever
reflects G’s resolution of following a kind of path of contemplation and
imitation of virtues as essences or ideas, which recalls the Platonic Stoicism.[122] However it is worth to
notice that such “…love and veneration…” was being counterbalanced by a growing
hatred of humankind.
At
this point it should be asked whether “love and veneration” was a mutual
feeling (passion) shared with Houyhnhnms or
were they only capable of feeling pity or some else limited affection to G and
his congeners?[123] The kind of love Houyhnhnms are endowed with is led only
to “…love the whole species…” not to individuals, whereby Master’s definition
of humans as “…a sort of animals…” with ”…some small pittance of reason…”
fallen in them by “accident”, only used “…to aggravate our natural corruptions,
and to acquire new ones, which nature had not given us…” does not leave room to
other feelings (passions) than the reactive ones, as it will see later.
Since Houyhnhnms are incapable of
understanding human behavior except by comparing them to similar creatures, the
Master uses Yahoos as reference to understand G’s account of human affairs.
Though he found that aborigine Yahoos surpassed G. in “…strength, speed, and
activity …”, humans show not only “…resemblance in the disposition of our
minds…” but a superior disposition for corruption and malice, paradoxically due
to the “…small pittance of reason…” which aggravates passions and corruptions
and has “…disarmed ourselves of the few abilities she [nature] had
bestowed…”
All
this shows humans incapable of leading themselves rationally, even though their
outcomes look apparently created by using reason, because everything so created
only would increase “…original wants…” and “…natural corruptions...” (not
lessening or satisfying them). So, laws, institutions of government, medical
practices … are consequences of passions intensified by reason, because
rational creatures would not need anything except reason to govern themselves.
Thus, what really drives both humans and Yahoos
are passions, but men’s pride like to think themselves as rational
(intelligent) animals, essentially capable of being guided by reason, but if it
so it is only to prevail in disputes by using arguments as weapons, but usually
not for getting the truth or being truly virtuous.
Within
these passions, the mutual hatred – due to “…the odiousness of their own
shapes, which all could see in the rest, but not in themselves…” – seems to be
the most powerful for driving yahoos (human)
to fight incessantly against each other. Hatred, however, is not but also a
consequence of avarice as it is shown either for their insatiable appetite,
incessant quarrels for shining stones, and the trend to steal and take any kind
of advantage from rival weakness. It does not matter that “…shining stones
abound…” they fight fiercely for appropriating the main possible amount of
stones.
The
unnatural appetites (desire of power) give way to disguise rudimentarily
passions in Yahoos as envy mixed with
avarice usually does, perhaps because ‘unnatural’ means trespassing a ‘natural’
red line, which works as natural rule (custom) for tricking or deceiving
rivals.[124] Humans’ trespass of such a
line is more artfully; “…art and reason…” concur to disguise such appetites or
passions, but they are essentially identical as it is shown when a Yahoo-leader deposes his favorite
servant by using general hatred (envy) against him, roused for squalid
privileges due to his services. Though humans and Yahoos share appetites, passions, tricking, concealing and
disguising, lying is what defines human features instead of reason or telling
the truth, because it supposes to tell stories about what-is-not. Yahoos can conceal, trick, mislead, and
even disguise, but not lying, because they do not know what-it-is (truth) to
then distort it, except if it means what they want. Their wants can be
concealed, which could be considered a proto-lying.
There
is certainly more in humans than in Yahoos,
but not something essentially different in the first of them.[125] In this case, more does
not mean better, but just the opposite. Yahoos
show what humans are basically, but only humans increase exponentially
“…original wants…” and “…natural corruptions...” which belong to both of them.
It is
obvious that nature has been so twisted in both races that there is no reason
to keep talking about them as different races, because much of their features
are only inherent to them, not to any other natural creature. The Master’s
description of Yahoos’ features uses
suggestions just to emphasize equivalences between both men and Yahoos as “…their strange disposition to
nastiness and dirt…” – only comparable to swine, who were unknown in Houyhnhnms
Land – understood both physically and morally; their “…infamous brutality…” by
sharing pregnant females and fighting fiercely with them “…as no other
sensitive creature ever arrived at…”; the seeds of human spleen in Yahoos’
laziness…[126]
Though
female Yahoos show some “…rudiments
of lewdness, coquetry, censure, and scandal…” placed “…by instinct in
womankind…” they do not have entirely displayed them as human both sexes do,
because if such rudiments are “…natural corruptions…” their politer appearances
are not natural outcomes, but “…entirely the productions of art and reason on
our side of the globe.”
Such
grade of exactness from Master’s speculations –supported by his random
observations and what was told to him by his congeners – encourages G. “…to
apply the character he gave of the Yahoos
to myself and my countrymen…” and to initiate his own observations to
better understand human nature, even though he kept some doubts yet about
whether he “…was of their own species…”, and even he was at once prevented of
being corrupted as consequence of “…the hatred I bore these brutes…”
But
more than curiosity it is G’s fear to be totally identified as one of “…these
brutes…” what drives his interest in watching them closely. However, hatred was
a mutual passion between G. and Yahoos,
because they tried to “…imitate [his] actions after the manner of monkeys, but
ever with great signs of hatred…” as a way not only to show their resentment to
one of them who did not behave as usual, but to imitate him as G. did respect Hs’
virtues and even appearance. Nevertheless, instead of hating or imitating
Houyhnhnms, Yahoos felt “…natural
awe…” to creatures they cannot understand (imitate or even mock) at all. So, if
they could imitate G. it is because somehow they could see G. as their imitable
congener, which would have had tragic consequences to G’s aspiration of passing
“…the rest of my life among these admirable Houyhnhnms,
in the contemplation and practice of every virtue…", because it would have
reminded him constantly his essential
similarities with such hated creatures.
Hatred
to Yahoos –more than love and
veneration to Houyhnhnms – prevents
G. of becoming a more brutal creature, but paradoxically it is also hatred what
prevents Yahoos of becoming
supposedly more advanced creatures because their imitation was simply mockery
based on hatred, not recognition of G’s pretended superiority supported by love
and veneration to Houyhnhnms, on the
one hand, and by hatred to Yahoos on
the other hand. Yahoos’ mockery
questions if having a superior reference to imitate is enough to improve
morally. Somehow, Yahoos understand
G’s superiority, but they hate (reject) precisely his attempt of becoming
someone beyond their ability to imitate. Their mockery is not but a way of
understanding negatively (reactively) perfection from hatred or envy. However,
such mockery could also work as an ironic sign of G’s vain intent of imitating
what he never would be for not being capable of becoming something higher than
a simple Yahoo as they congeners enviously saw him.
By
imitating G., Yahoos could not
acquire any knowledge or virtue because of their perverse and restive
disposition “…for they are cunning, malicious, treacherous, and revengeful…”
Their insolence, abjection, and cruelty are consequences of a strong body shape
mixed with a cowardly spirit, which intensifies (supports) their trend to use
force measureless in an uncompassionate manner.
However, they are naturally endowed with primary abilities to survive by
themselves by building rudimental shelters and procuring food by themselves.[127]
Nevertheless,
the hatred to G. was not an obstacle for unleashing sexual instincts by a
female Yahoo who felt appealed by his
nudity. Such “…natural propensity…” would have proved G. as belonging to
Yahoos’ kin, but it surely shows how some passions (sexual desire) can override
momentarily other ones (hatred) or even blend with them.
This
incident definitely left G. defenseless facing his evident likeness to Yahoos,
because it was not a rational comparison that decided about such similarity,
but a “…natural propensity…” what chose sexually and showed an irrefutable
identity, at least corporally. It is noteworthy that what really amuses Houyhnhnms was G’s erroneous presumption
of belonging to a different species, which is either denied by the female Yahoo’s ardent desires for him and
indirectly by G’s frantic rejection of her lust. It
couldn’t be but absurd,
risible and somehow tragic-comic for such kind of rational creatures to observe
a whole Yahoo attempting “…to
cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it…” but being questioned at
once in such a passionate way either by the female Yahoo lust and his rejection
for her. The female-Yahoo's frantic
desires were not usual within her kin because they usually exercised some kind
of primitive coquetry in their seductive affairs[128],
whereby such frenzy only could be due to G’s shape as a highly attractive
paradigm of beauty (sex appeal) for male-Yahoos,
highly envied and desired for that reason at once.
By
contrast, Houyhnhnms’ virtue (maxims)
highlights how far G. was of being a rational creature “…because reason taught
us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we
cannot do either…” Being not sure whether he was a Yahoo, as his Master had plainly attested since he watched G’s
nudity, his accounts about England were leaded initially by false sense of
human honor (pride), while his judgment about Yahoos was driven more by hatred than by reason in order to
distinguish himself from such brutes. So, G. discovers gradually that what is
called reason could be easily “…mingled, obscured, or discoloured, by passion
and interest...”, driving humans mainly to chimeras supported by their
prevalence instead of guiding to happiness (energeia, calm, serenity) brought
by imitating actual rational creatures, but not before assuming a sort of
Socratic ignorance as initial path for knowing themself.[129]
Therefore,
the Master recognizes Socrates just because his knowledge of reason limits,
which means that the scope of any rational argument is ultimately supported by
such limits, not by human attempts to prevail in disputes. So, what really
supports the finding of reason nature is a kind of virtue capable of
recognizing intrinsic limits, not surpassing them.[130]
That way, G. uses Houyhnhnms’ virtues
to describe the brighter side of humans, symbolized in those abstract equine
creatures. However, while the darker side (passions) of human-Yahoos seems to characterize most
people, the brighter side (virtues) features are limited to the fewest of them.
The Socratic point of view according to which virtues cannot be taught but can
be only known through the maieutic method is subtlety referred by mentioning
Socrates and Plato as human references to match with Houyhnhnms natural disposition related “…to love the whole
species…”, which endows these creatures to cultivate virtues such as
friendship, benevolence, decency, and civility without unnecessary ceremony,
and endows reason at once to distinguish “…where there is a superior degree of
virtue.”
If
“…Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the Houyhnhnms…”, fear and hatred (malice)
are the two principal passions in humans “…not confined to particular objects,
but universal to the whole race…” So, renouncing to fear and hatred or at least
taming them is only possible through a special passion which is love (Eros)
platonically understood as desire of the beloved’s perfection and veneration of
perfection, so what it is loved at last is perfection, just a going-beyond any
particular person or thing but necessarily throughout them. That some humans
are exceptionally capable of driving such passion to reason is showed by G’s
love and veneration to Houyhnhnms who
embody virtues, but he keeps also “…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.”[131]
However,
such love as any other passion is ultimately inexplicable and very unstable,
since humans, alike Yahoos, usually show a “…strange disposition to nastiness
and dirt…” both physical and moral “whereas there appears to be a natural love
of cleanliness in all other animals...” All this makes even harder to answer
why humans are capable of loving something beyond their nature like, for
instance, the rhythm of the celestial dome as a symbol of perfection as
incorruptible, eternal, and very useful for traveling as G knew very well.
Houyhnhnms’
"acosmist love"[132] is praised by G.[133], whose love for them is
more platonic since he feels attracted by principal virtues as friendship and
benevolence, and all the other ones (comeliness, strength, temperance,
industry, exercise, cleanliness, …) The worldly love –and also courtship,
presents, jointures, settlements...– has
“…no place in their thoughts, or terms whereby to express them in their
language…”, because their love points at the whole race – which embody all virtues
– rather than to particular creatures, who are rationally distinguished by
their “…superior degree of virtue…” rather than by other passional affections.
So,
preserving “…the race from degenerating…” is a token of this love, which cares
the whole species throughout individuals and preserves both of them from
degenerating[134]. Subtly, G. compares
“…love to the whole species…” with concupiscence as methods “…in order to
propagate and continue the species…”
While concupiscence could be a natural path to allow procreation –but as
a want or passion it could not be a valid principle for education, at least for
Lilliputians, - the Houyhnhnms' “…love to the whole species…” is both a natural
teaching and procreative principle, because that love guides reason to arrange
marriages in order to avoid degeneration of race, instead of satisfying any
want, passion or interest.
Since
human marriage is driven mainly by concupiscence and all kind of passions and
interests against nature – which “… works all things to perfection…”– its outcomes could not be other than
degenerating human race, moreover if children’s care is trusted to people
“...good for nothing but bringing children into the world…”[135]
by any motive except preserving “…the race from degenerating…” Curiously,
Houyhnhnms usually distinguish between “inferior” (imperfect, worst) and
“superior” (perfection, better) nature, because they do not even have any word
for “…what is evil in a rational creature…”. Good (righteous) and evil do not
have any moral significance, except because good means natural or according to
nature, and the opposite is called Yahoo[136]
(against nature, out of natural order[137])
Therefore, nature has different levels, which are catalogued regarding grades
of perfection.[138]
Nevertheless,
the point is how an inferior creature – be them both the inferior Houyhnhms or
G. – could aim to perfection and be attracted by it? Is this an exception – it
would be said, an anomaly – or is it because the “…small pittance of reason…”
allows him aiming to such perfection? Could any other human being be enticed
(attracted) by virtues embodied in such archetypical creatures? If so, it would
be only a question mainly about passion (love), not exclusively about reason,
because even being endowed by nature with love to the whole species, the
inferior Houyhnhnms are barred from breeding with the superior ones for
avoiding to corrupt the specie, which is an obvious rational choice done from
those superior Houyhnhnms and abided by everyone, but driven both by fear to
degenerate racially and love to the whole species at once.[139]
However,
could G. become a Houyhnhnm ever?[140] He felt attracted by
virtues which he could imitate, but facing at once the latent risk of being
seduced by “… example[s] or incitement[s] to vice…” out of Houyhnhnms’ environment, while the equine race did not know such
seductions and even were incapable of feeling and understanding them. Far of
imitating virtues, Houyhnhnms only
follow their instincts[141], though through a training
process which arises from their inner potentiality. Ultimately, it was not reason
that drove G. to imitate Houyhnhnms but
love and veneration, emotions (passions, affects) at last.[142]
However, might it suppose at least that because G could feel like Houyhnhnms do, by imitating them, would
he become one of them? If so, then Yahoos
might imitate G’s rudiment of reason? But while G feels love and veneration
to H, they did not reciprocate such feelings, because though “..nature teaches
them to the whole species…” their love was surpassed by fear and hatred
regarding Yahoos, even G. as a
considered part of this species.
G’s
exceptionality becomes a point of discrepancies, which introduces Houyhnhnms to debate –first indirectly
and then openly- about what was really G. and how to deal ahead with him? So, Houyhnhnms’ Council deliberations complete
Yahoos’ depiction and deepen in their
origin and behavior (nature). Regarding their origin it is established they
“…were the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animals which nature ever
produced …” So, though nature tends to work “…all things to perfection…” Yahoos seem to be an inexplicable
anomaly in this order, which should be eliminated to somehow restore it.[143] So, Yahoos as a race pose a
fundamental question to rationality and nature not only as per Houyhnhnms standards but overall as per
some philosophical perspectives at XVII and XVIII centuries.[144]
If
nature works “…all things to perfection…” it would be incomprehensible how
something so imperfect (” … an animal so savage by nature…”) could be
“…aborigines of the land…” and even less why were they so unteachable. So, determining whether Yahoos were
“…aborigines of the land…” is an important question to define their fate due to
“…their evil disposition…” and for being “…the most unteachable of all brutes”
capable of being tamed, but not educated at all.[145]
What tradition had established was the very filthy origin of the “…two of these
brutes…” probably “…produced by the heat of the sun upon corrupted mud and
slime, or from the ooze and froth of the sea…”.[146]
Yahoos fear and fight each other as Hobbesian
creatures do in the State of War, but reason does not emerge in them as an
intermediate path to any agreement. So, the fear does not mark an essential
difference between Yahoos and humans
but the “small pittance of reason”, though Yahoos
bestow “…natural awe…” toward Houyhnhnms
as virtuous creatures alike other animals which neither can understand
(imitate) rationally them at all.[147]
Therefore, if Hobbesian creatures can eventually reach a state of peace through
some kind of agreements, either Lilliputians,
Laputians, Yahoos and conspicuously humans are barely equipped to reach any
reasonable agreement, because reason is not only driven but totally
subordinated (obscured) by passions to such point that is highly questionable
its role as mediator amongst these powerful desires.
Although
Yahoo’s uncertain natural origin
(like evil is to Philosophy and Theology), it was much more certain that they
were totally strangers to this land, “…because of the violent hatred the
Houyhnhnms, as well as all other animals, bore them…” in which case they should
be substituted by aborigines “…asses, which are a comely animal, easily kept,
more tame and orderly, without any offensive smell, strong enough for labour…”
So Houyhnhnms, which symbolize reason, agree not to dominate Yahoos (passions)
but to eliminate them, because they are essentially uncontrollable and thus
much more that simply incompatible with reason as they could corrupt it by
generating fear in its most conspicuous carriers. For having fewer passions
than humans[148], Houyhnhnms do not know how to deal with them except by eliminating
them, which suggests that somehow the equines could feel fear. Contrary to
humans, who suffer passions as an uncontrollable disease, which could not be
healed, controlled, and even less eliminated by any means, Houyhnhmns decide to suppress the incipient fear they feel or at
least its source.
Contrary
to his congeners' main opinions, G’s teachability is used by his Master to find
a solution to Yahoos’ annihilation
“…without destroying life…”, but it also works as a possible explanation to the
essential question derived from Yahoos’ presence
in this land and to Houyhnhnms’ assumptions
about reason and nature: Is it nature so perfect if it is capable at once of
generating or creating irrational creatures, incapable of being improved
(educated, cultivated), and averse to any order, cleanness, civility, …because
are dominated by passions without some trace of reason? Could Nature
degenerate? And ultimately, are passions the outcomes of such degeneration?
Beyond
these questions, there is perhaps a more worrisome issue derived from G's
accounts about horses in England, that is: could Houyhnhnms be subjected to
degradation as the horses in England were?[149]Ergo,
is reason at risk to be degraded (corrupted) by passions or, on the contrary,
passions at risk to be worsened by reason?
It is
worth to notice that among Houyhnhnms only
G’s Master and some of his companions
had witnessed the outcomes of uncontrollable passions corrupting reason either
from G’s stories or his behavior too. So, the Master uses G’s presence in Houyhnhnmland to explain Yahoos as a sort of alien creatures
“…driven thither over the sea…” whose small rationality had degenerated as G’s
case could demonstrate by having “…all the qualities of a Yahoo, only a little more civilized by some tincture of reason…”.[150]
Even
though recognizing such “…tincture of reason…” in Yahoos’ human ancestors, the Master does not think probable that
degraded Yahoos might recover such
incipient reason except for worsening their corruption. So, taming them
provisionally by castrating the youngest –as human-Yahoos usually do to horses in England– is the provisional solution
to annihilate the whole race at last. So, this is the practical answer to avoid
the consequences of allowing raising passions (Yahoos) which could not be otherwise dominated. Thus, Houyhnhnms cannot see any possibility of
dominating rationally passions or even setting a conciliatory relationship
between passions and reason (moral), otherwise the Master probably would have
endorsed G. as an exceptional Yahoo who
could educate his congeners as G. promised to do with his “...own species…”[151] On the contrary, the
Assembly and even G’s Master fear that such “tincture of reason” could corrupt
even more the passions given by nature to Yahoos.
This
impossibility would plant the seed of G’s tragedy, because imitating Houyhnhnms or wanting to be a rational
being for loving and venerating them, and following their maxims and virtues
would not be enough to be accepted as a rational being. While Houyhnhnms “…are endowed by nature with a general
disposition to all virtues…” Yahoos are prone to an “… evil disposition…”, and
the highest goal G. could reach was to cure himself “… of some bad habits and
dispositions, by endeavouring, as far as [he] inferior nature was capable, to
imitate the Houyhnhnms.”[152] Therefore, by imitating Houyhnhnms G. could not be capable of eliminating
his nature, initiating that way an incipient questioning about his intentions of
helping his congeners to amend themselves by imitating Houyhnhnms examples.[153]
Curiously,
although Houyhnhnms had degenerated
intellectually in England or Europe, they instincts did not become corrupted[154] or irrational, dominated
by passions to lie, desire of power, cruelty,… as it happened to Yahoos since they were supposedly
“…forsaken by their companions…”, which might means that reason is not human
essence or nature, because what is essential to something is what constitutes
that thing as such and it could not fade without making disappear it and/or
even being transformed in another thing.
Since
the “small pittance of reason” had faded absolutely in Yahoos for being forsaken long time ago, it means that reason was
not their innate essence, both in humans or Yahoos,
because in humans the reason is also “…mingled, obscured, or discoloured, by
passion and interest”, corrupted and capable of corrupting at once, not being
more than an accident in them.[155] Even more, all this drives
to recognize passion as their essence, ergo, what never fades under any
circumstance. Thus, humans are simply Yahoos
(passional creatures), but worsened as a result of passions corrupting
reasons to intensify their scope and command and vice versa. Only
exceptionally, but also very defectively, they might be governed by reason,
just for loving, imitating, and consequently, being attracted by virtues to
renounce to be driven by passions (hatred, cruelty, lying ...) as G eventually
tried to do.
Imitating
virtues embodied by Houyhnhnms’ Spartan
customs[156] is the way that love
drives G. to almost a perfect rational life and eventually to happiness.[157] However, his tragedy is
loving (venerating) creatures which barely tolerate and definitely fear him
just as a Yahoo “…only a little more
civilized by some tincture of reason…”[158]
Except Master’s family and himself, the Assembly seems to feel fear for G’s “…
some rudiments of reason…” which might seduce Yahoos to increase their natural depravity. But, how could rational
creatures feel afraid of reason? It would be a paradox if it were not for they
“… understand the nature of Yahoos much better than myself…”, because if they
hated Yahoos’ behavior it is because what they feared most was the mixture of
such rudimentary reason with strong passions and even more the worsening of
passions through the influence of this “… quality fitted to increase our
natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an
ill shapen body, not only larger but more distorted.”
Perhaps
for the first time Houyhnhnms feel
that fear (passions) might corrupt their reason (virtues) with devastating
consequences at the sight of G’s accounts about Yahoos in England, who “…acted
as the governing, rational animal, and held the Houyhnhnms in servitude…”.
Since
fear intensifies and unleashes other passions[159],
at least among all the creatures previously described by G., Houyhnhnms reason might be also at risk
of falling in servitude to placate their own fears. So, instead of reason it
would be fear who would begin to reign among Houyhnhnms, but with a
reasonable appearance. Fear would be then more heard and obeyed than common
sense, love, or benevolence precisely for preventing falling under Yahoos’ dominance (rule of passions).
That
way, Houyhnhnms find themselves trapped
in an unnoticed paradox because deciding to expel G. to avoid the uprising of
passions (Yahoos) was only possible by fearing these passions. Being fear and
not reason which decides at last, because reason becomes only a means, not a
reference to judge G, he is not judged regard what is reasonable in him but
what is passional in his congeners and consequently feared by creatures which
incarnate reason and virtues but cannot understand passions and consequently
fear them. So, the only way Houyhnhnms find
to control passions (fear) is to cut any bonds with any eventual source of
disturbance. It could be discussed if Houyhnhnms
fear is weaker than in humans, but at least this time their decision is
driven by fear disguised as common sense (need of protecting the cattle and
ultimately themselves from Yahoos).
It is
noteworthy that G’s Master was the only one among Hs. who judges reasonably
him, but only because he “…had cured [himself] of some bad habits and
dispositions, by endeavouring, as far as [his] inferior nature was capable, to
imitate the Houyhnhnms.” However, it
was not enough to lessen Assembly’s fear and to make its decision “…less
rigorous…” even if it had been opposed with very practical reasons to avoid
sending G. to a certain death.[160] It was solely G’s Master’s
benevolence and presence of mind which mediated between both Assembly's and G’s
fears, but by giving complete satisfaction to the Assembly’s exhortation,
allowing G. to build a boat to definitely leave, and renouncing at once “…to
keep [him] in his service as long as [he] lived.”
Just
as G’s love of virtues was an exception among humans, also his Master was an
exception for treating a “…brute animal…” as a rational creature.[161] Neither those who knew
personally G. nor the whole Assembly considered G. as his Master did, which
finally led them to judge him more influenced by fearing reason contaminated by
passions than guided by reasonable (benevolent) considerations. The arguments
to condemn G. were no more than consequence of not knowing how to deal with
passions intensified by a rudimentary reason and fearing this mixture, because
if the sole passions are Yahoos’ nature,
their mix with reason is rationally incomprehensible, unamendable, and
consequently much more dangerous and uncontrollable than mere passions. At the
sight of their strength and capacity to exterminate easily Yahoos[162] and having in mind that G.
had healing himself as per his Master’s account, their verdict could have been
“…less rigorous…”; moreover it becomes a fearful excuse to avoid dealing with
unintelligible passions intensified by a rudimentary reason, whose outcomes
would be unnatural, unknown, and most of all very destructive for Houyhnhnms as G’s accounts about human’s
treatment of horses in England had already showed.
• The human perspective. (The return to the
Cave)
G’s
return to England could be compared with Plato’s character who returns into the
Cave to teach Truth, Beauty and Good (things as they really should be and in
fact are regarding their perfection) to those who never have seen them, except
by distorted reflections.[163] But such teaching supposes
G. as one of the exceptions among humans (Yahoos),
who could not only assimilate virtues and values but also use his rudimentary
reason to teach them. But being so basic, would it be capable of that? Would it
be anything else necessary than such a
reason not only to assimilate virtues but to teach or spread them among humans?
Besides reason it is not but love (veneration) to these virtues and values who
engages G. in his final destiny, but also some kind of implicit hope for
amending humans that drives him to be “...useful to my own species”.[164] However, it was also G’s
reason who was mainly guided by fear in defending human honor by concealing
some facts or even by explaining distortedly some human practices –passions
(vices)– that G. said he had already dominated.
Somehow
G’s destiny is a tragic one because even though he is obliged to depart from
where he wanted to pass his “…life in the contemplation and practice of every
virtue…”[165], he still keeps loving and
venerating virtues embodied by those who have considered him a potential
disruptive and passional creature. Moreover, G’s promise to his Master “…of
being useful to my own species, by celebrating the praises of the renowned
Houyhnhnms, and proposing their virtues to the imitation of mankind…” depends
on how these rudiments of reason were capable of removing, seducing or guiding
passions, and how such love to virtues would be capable of defeating the deep
hatred to Yahoos-human raised in him as a consequence of his love to the values
incarnated by Houyhnhnms.
Paradoxically, while his love for these rational equines increasingly grows,
his hatred for Yahoos likewise deepens. Would it not be a sign of the
inextricable link between love and hatred in humans? On the other hand, it is
noteworthy that the scope of Houyhnhnms’
love reaches "...the whole species..." except those irrational
creatures they cannot understand.
To
accomplish his commitment G. uses his rudimentary reason to communicate his
congeners Houyhnhnms’ virtues and
values he had seen and practiced –just the opposite to his Master’s definition
of reason’s purpose in humans.[166] Somehow, writing his
experiences of travels is a way to accomplish his promise, but it only could be
possible by focusing his “…small pittance of reason…” in unmasking what he had
understood as human reason by describing accurately how do passions work to
distort it and how at least two of these passions –love and veneration to
virtues– might eventually enhance reason to remove infernal habits,
corruptions, vices and passions.[167]
So. G’s writing is a kind of ascetic process not only intending to distinguish
reason from passions but also looking for liberating reason from passions.
Howsoever
that passions are an essential part in humans – contrary to that accident
called “rudiments of reason” – what do such rudiments mean? Are they enough not
only to intensify but, contrarily and additionally, to dominate (control,
appease, drive…) passions? Were these rudiments who allowed G. to understand
and imitate Houyhnhnms’ virtues or
was love to truth, virtues and values who additionally inclined his reason to
understand and imitate such creatures?
If far
from lessening passions, human reason intensifies any passion, be it low or
high, its main goal (the truth) is subdued and distorted “… mingled, obscured,
or discoloured, by passion and interest.” In fact, G. does not say explicitly
which passions exert a more powerful influence on reason, instead he describes
how they prompt and disguise themselves as rational outcomes. Even love, being
the most complex and praised passion, might obstruct reaching the truth as it
impedes giving a fair account of human affairs, just because
in this case love works mostly driven by the intent of preserving “…the honour
of my own kind…” rather than by being aimed at real virtues.
In his
voyages G. discovers gradually either his own passions (false pride, fear,
lying, love, hatred, …) as the subjacent stream in apparent reasonable
behaviors, arguments or narrations, but it was only totally clear since he
discovers himself as a lover of virtues and realizes that any other passion
distorts and misleads reason instead of obeying (venerating) it and even love
can distort reason since it aims to people or things separated from virtues.[168] It is so, however, that G’s love is discovered ultimately as a
philosophical one (maybe moral) since it aims to venerate truth and the virtues
embodied by his Master, and to reject his own faults and “… all falsehood or disguise…”. As well as G. could avoid salt[169] , he could put away other
wants and therefore, passions. But these latter are rejected by the leading
passion (love) in this case, which imposes itself to the other ones, most of
all because it drives primarily reason to follow virtues and values. However,
it could not be forgotten that such love grows proportionally to hatred and
contempt for Yahoos.
G.
does not want only to describe Houyhnhnms
virtues as rational paradigms or archetypes, but also Yahoos’ passions (vices and corruption), as a way to reject any
misconception, false assumptions or even lies about a supposed rational nature
of humans, because if such archetypes are examples to imitate, those passions
are drives to be driven and ultimately removed by a “rudimentary reason”. It is
worth questioning what is the role of love in G’s commitment, because it could
not be understood without seeing love (platonic Eros) to truth, beauty and good
as capable of attracting reason and defining what human reason means and how it
works, at least exceptionally.[170]
G’s
love is so focused in virtues and values[171]
that even though Houyhnhnms' assembly
had ruled against him, it was not enough to raise his hatred and spite against
them and thus to obliterate the virtues embodied by them. Although benevolence
is a consequence of obeying the reason – which only love to the whole species
could see gradually incarnated in everything, except in Yahoos –, Houyhnhnms were
not capable of detecting any seed of these virtues in them, though G. already
had given proof of imitating Houyhnhnms’
behavior. However, both Yahoos and
human affairs initially related by G. overshadow virtues instead of giving some
signal of recognizing or following them. Even G’s initial recognition of
virtues and values seems mediated by a misunderstood honor, which gradually
fades (melts) in front of his Master’s clever sight on both Yahoos and humans affairs (behavior) and
their motivations.
Dismounting
gradually G’s arguments and false assumptions about human rationality (honor)
by comparing subtly the mechanisms in Yahoos’
passional (corrupt) behavior with human actions, his Master lead him to a
kind of pristine perplexity (emotional nudity), which prepares G’s reason to
assimilate virtues and values through love and veneration[172],
but also to reject his own species, even his own family, until almost its total
abhorrence because the “…example or incitement to vice...” they represented.
This rejection comprehends not only human vices, passions or corruptions but
even physiological features as human scent, perhaps as a symbol of corruption
produced by passions. If Houyhnhnms awake
G's love and veneration, conversely Yahoos
trigger the fear as fuel of his understanding and his whole body, as it had
happened when he met Lilliputians,
Brobdingnagians, Laputians, Luggnaggians, …
It is
noteworthy that if G’s reason is attracted by Houyhnhnms’ virtues throughout “love and veneration”, that love is
not like Houyhnhnms’ love “to the
whole species”, but at best as a “lover of mankind”.[173] While the scope of human love is barely
constrained to mankind, supported mainly by desires, and rarely displayed, Houyhnhnms’ love reaches the whole
species, except Yahoos. Theirs is a
kind of love guided by moral reasons rather than by desires.[174]
Since Yahoos are prone to nastiness, dirty,
and thus no sense and no reason, they embody the imperfection of nature, which
is a paradox because nature “…works all things to perfection…” But comparing
such imperfections with the “…enormities…” that abhorred the Master in G’s
accounts about human affairs, these later ones surpasses any “…natural vices…”
observed either in Yahoos and others
brutes, which is attributed “…instead of reason…” to “…some quality fitted to
increase our natural vices…” However, both imperfection and consequently, but
rarely at once, desire of perfection is what constitutes human nature;
otherwise G’s desires of perfection could not be explained but “…for The word
Houyhnhnm…” which means “…the perfection of nature.”[175]
One of
G’s challenges is to find a way of using what he still calls reason to placate
or dominate vices by redirecting human love to virtues. It was the main purpose
of his writing, which relates his voyage describing human nature from different
perspectives for contributing hopefully to amend it.[176]
At
this point G. finds a disjunctive between keeping himself as an exceptional
creature, capable of dominating passions among Yahoos’, or giving or not his writing to ”… animals utterly
incapable of amendment by precept or example…” His hope of Yahoos-readers’ amendment in a reasonable time depends on a
question: Could human nature as a whole be amended (changed, transformed) by
appealing to reason or any other means?[177]
The only effect his writing had obtained was a profusion of “…libels, and keys,
and reflections, and memoirs, and second parts …” which lead more to confusion
than to amendment, just the foreseeable outcomes of human reason subdued
(tinted) by the “…infernal habit of lying, shuffling, deceiving, and
equivocating…” and incapable of grasping some indubitable truth (or any truth
at all) and even less of following it decidedly.
From
here, it seems that the only thing human beings want to get is mainly
satisfying their passions, even the weirdest. But if so, reason would be the
most powerful and weakest faculty at once –barely distinguishable from
passions– because since it tries to command passions there is no other
consequence than intensifying and making them more powerful. G. finishes his
writing with a great paradox, which is the chimera of reason for dominating
passions, because it is not but reason who intensifies passions since it tries
to dominate them. Such an attempt of dominating would be no more than a passion
itself, perhaps the most powerful and hopeless at once.
If
there is human nature at all it should be no other than a passional one, barely
capable of loving virtues and values and incapable at all of attaining to them,
except by cutting all passional bonds as G. had proposed by not coming back to
humans ever. But, could be passions cut without killing love to truth at once
and all the other passions which compose love?[178]
G’s
failure for dominating or cutting any bonds to passions reveals definitely how
chimerical is such an intend since humans could not renounce to or reform
totally their nature; and even when some of them might exceptionally and
voluntarily repudiate passions, the later ones could not be eradicate as G’s
admits by recognizing that “…some corruptions of my Yahoo nature have revived
in me… by an unavoidable necessity…”[179]
His regret for having attempted to reform the human race and his further
(consequent) renouncement to any project of amending it through rational ways
is rooted in this tragic experience of checking how impotent is human reason to
govern passions and drive humans to virtues. It would be highly paradoxical
that reason were driven by love for cutting other passions, because other
passions could exert similar or even stronger drives on it. If reason were not a
passion at once, how could it have any power to cut, govern or substitute any
other passion?
Though
G. does not reject “...reason itself…” which “…is true and just…”[180], he also knows that reason
does not exist but through the “… reason of every particular man [which] is
weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his
passions, and his vices.” Being human reason so dependent of passions –which
could be eventually engulfed by passions until disappear totally, as it
happened to Yahoos supposedly
forsaken in Houyhnhnmland–, it is
always at risk of disappearing under its own corruptions, ergo, lies,
prejudices, false assumptions. This extreme would be only known by our own
reason if it were driven by a paradoxical passion: love of truth, because
passions do not seek truth, but only imposing each other through any means.[181]
[1] We have followed two editions of Gulliver’s travels into several remote nations of the World. By
LEMUEL GULLIVER, first a Surgeon and then a Captain of several Ships.
The first of
these: Dublin: Printed by and for Bookseller, in Essex Street, opposite to the
Bridge. MDCCXXXV, published in The
Writings of Jonathan Swift. W.W. Norton & Company. New York-London,
1973.
The second
one: George Bell and Sons edition by David Price, 1892, published in the
Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/829/829-h/829-h.htm
The
quotations have been taken from the latter. The Roman numerals would refer to
the Parts and the Arabic ones to the Chapters.
[2] There were
exceptions as Michel de Montaigne, just a renaissance man, who questioned usual
assumptions regarding
differences between humans and animals, and consequently the Aristotelian
definition.
[3] I – 8 “I stayed but two months with my wife and family,
for my insatiable desire of seeing foreign countries, would suffer me to
continue no longer.”
III – 7 “…that insatiable desire I had to see the
world in every period of antiquity placed before me…”
[4] Beyond a based optic perspectivist description, Gulliver
offers a genealogy of passions by describing human reactions in front of
overwhelming situations. The magnifying glasses are used by Swift-Gulliver as
symbols of how passions work by magnifying, reducing, and even distorting what
they help to watch or more over how they modify, create or even condition
reality. As magic lanterns rather than simply spectacles, they are the actual a
priori of human behavior (conduct) which condition the usual perspectivism of
human life. Passions are not simply disposable magnifying glasses, but the
ineludible condition of any human perception of and projection in reality.
To abound in
Swift-Gulliver’s use of magnifying glasses as literary device to discover what
usually lies behind appareances and to experiment the perspectivism in human
life, see: Donoghue, Denis Jonathan
Swift: a Critical Introduction. Cambridge Univerrsity Press, 1969. The
digitally printed version, 2010. http://books.google.com/books?id=TcqZpVQlNRoC&pg=PA233&dq=swift+jonathan+Baruch+Spinoza&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EZD6U_WkLsyeyASnvYDoCQ&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=swift%20jonathan%20Baruch%20Spinoza&f=false
[5]
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Socrates%27+practical+reply+to+the+learner%27s+paradox+in+the+Meno-a093700298
[6] Damrosch, Leo
Jonathan Swift: His Life and his World. Yale University Pressbooks,
London, 2013
http://books.google.com/books?id=Cdo_AQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=
“ There’s not
much psychological characterization, but physical sensations are vividly
recorded, and Swift constantly make us feel what it would be like to be
Gulliver”
[7] Even though it is known Swift's aversion to metaphysical
and abstruse themes, there is no reason to think he did not comprehend and
appreciate such matters until the extent of not being capable of rethinking
them from a kind of perspectivism used literarily by Cyrano de Bergerac, and also used but
philosophically by B. Pascal and G.W.
Leibniz in the 17th century.
See:
●
Carnochan,
W. B. Lemuel Gulliver's Mirror for Man.
University of California Press, 1968. P.122
●
Crampton,
Nancy, "The Influence of Cyrano De Bergerac's "Voyages to the Sun and
the Moon" on Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels"" (1935).
Graduate Thesis Collection. Paper
150. http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/grtheses/150
●
McDowell,
Charles “Catastrophism and PuritanThought:The Newton Era” From:
"A Symposium on Creation" (Vol. VI), 1977 - Pacific Meridian
Publishing Co. pg 57-90 http://www.creationism.org/symposium/symp6no3.htm
[8] Frances, David “Swift and Hobbes –A Neglected Parallel”
BostonUniversity Studies in English 3 (1957): p.243
“[Swift] was
a basically philanthropic man convinced against his own will that Hobbes’s
Leviathan is truer to human nature than The Sermon of the Mount. As a result,
he often intellectually accepted what he instinctively and emotionally
disliked.”
[9] G. does not openly quote Robert Hooke’s treatise about
microscopic world: Micrographia,
where Hooke states in The preface: “By the means of Telescopes, there is
nothing so far distant but may be represented to our view; and by the help of
Microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there
is a new visible World discovered to the understanding By this means the
Heavens are open'd, and a vast number of new Stars, and new Motions, and new
Productions appear in them, to which all the ancient Astronomers were utterly
Strangers. By this the Earth it self, which lyes so neer us, under our feet,
shews quite a new thing to us, and in every little particle of its matter; we
now behold almost as great a variety of Creatures, as we were able before to
reckon up in the whole Universe it self.” But it is obvious G’s knowledge about Hooke's work.
Hooke, Robert
Microphagia. LONDON, Printed by Jo.
Martyn, and Ja. Allestry, Printers to the ROYAL SOCIETY, and are to be sold at
their Shop at the Bell in S. Paul's Church-yard. M DC LX V.
http://www.gutenberGULLIVERorg/files/15491/15491-h/15491-h.htm
[10] Hobbes, Thomas De cive. LONDON. Printed by J. G for R. Royston, at the Angel
in Ivie-lane. 1651.
“The cause of
mutual fear consists partly in the natural equality of men, partly in their
mutual will of hurting: whence it comes to pass that we can neither expect from
others, nor promise to ourselves the least security.” “All men therefore among
themselves are by nature equal; the inequality we now discern, hath its spring
from the civil law.” P. 25
[11] I – 4 “For as to what we have heard you affirm, that
there are other kingdoms and states in the world inhabited by human creatures
as large as yourself, our philosophers are in much doubt, and would rather
conjecture that you dropped from the moon, or one of the stars; because it is
certain, that a hundred mortals of your bulk would in a short time destroy all
the fruits and cattle of his majesty’s dominions…”
[12] Hooke, R. Ibid.
“…the Creature was so greedy, that though it could not contain more, yet
it continued sucking as fast as ever, and as fast emptying it self behind: the
digestion of this Creature must needs be very quick, for though I perceiv'd the
blood thicker and blacker when suck'd, yet, when in the guts, it was of a very
lovely ruby colour, and that part of it, which was digested into the veins,
seemed white; whence it appears, that a further digestion of blood may make it
milk, at least of a resembling colour…”
There is a
passage where G seems to be quoting Hooke’s microscopic observations except by
his curiosity as surgeon, which makes him think in dissecting the vermin, which
Hooke could not have thought, and also by rejecting such revolting sight
instead of being fascinated as Hooke was:
II – 4 “But
the most hateful sight of all, was the lice crawling on their clothes. I could
see distinctly the limbs of these vermin with my naked eye, much better than
those of a European louse through a microscope, and their snouts with which
they rooted like swine. They were the first I had ever beheld, and I should
have been curious enough to dissect one of them, if I had had proper
instruments, which I unluckily left behind me in the ship, although, indeed,
the sight was so nauseous, that it perfectly turned my stomach.“
Damrosch,
Leo Jonathan
Swift: His Life and his World. Yale University Pressbooks, London, 2013
http://books.google.com/books?id=Cdo_AQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false
“Hooke was fascinated by a live louse under
his microscope, nothing that the blood it sucked from his hand “was very lovely
ruby colour”
[13] I – 2 “But the
colonel ordered six of the ringleaders to be seized, and thought no punishment
so proper as to deliver them bound into my hands; which some of his soldiers
accordingly did, pushing them forward with the butt-ends of their pikes into my
reach.”
[14] I – 3 “He shall be our ally against our enemies in the
island of Blefuscu, and do his utmost to destroy their fleet, which is now
preparing to invade us.”
I – 4 “He
began with compliments on my liberty; said “he might pretend to some merit in
it;” but, however, added, “that if it had not been for the present situation of
things at court, perhaps I might not have obtained it so soon. For,” said he, “as flourishing a condition as
we may appear to be in to foreigners, we labour under two mighty evils: a
violent faction at home, and the danger of an invasion, by a most potent enemy,
from abroad.”
[15] I – 5 “…when I signed those articles upon which I
recovered my liberty, there were some which I disliked, upon account of their
being too servile; neither could anything but an extreme necessity have forced
me to submit …”
[16] See G’s descriptions of his displays as entertainer,
especially in chapter 3.
[17] I – 2 “Sometimes they determined to starve me; or at
least to shoot me in the face and hands with poisoned arrows, which would soon
despatch me; but again they considered, that the stench of so large a carcass
might produce a plague in the metropolis, and probably spread through the whole
kingdom.”
[18] I – 5 “This open bold declaration of mine was so opposite
to the schemes and politics of his imperial majesty, that he could never
forgive me. He mentioned it in a very artful manner at council, where I
was told that some of the wisest appeared, at least by their silence, to be of
my opinion; but others, who were my secret enemies, could not forbear some
expressions which, by a side-wind, reflected on me. And from this time
began an intrigue between his majesty and a junto of ministers, maliciously
bent against me, which broke out in less than two months, and had like to have
ended in my utter destruction. Of so little weight are the greatest
services to princes, when put into the balance with a refusal to gratify their
passions.”
[19]Jakonen, Mikko “Thomas Hobbes on fear, mimesis, aisthesis
and politics” in Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory. Volume 12,
Issue 2, 2011
“Hobbes's
theory of fear has two major implications for his political theory. One
implication is how men's mutual fear is the source of a commonwealth by
institution. The second implication is that sovereign power is the source of
fear, and that sovereign power also uses that fear to govern people. These two
implications have not been analyzed fully in past studies. In a way, a
sovereign captures mutual fear reigning in a multitude and transforming it into
a political tool designed for government of the subjects. Possessing the right
and power to cause death, a sovereign takes the place of God on earth. A
sovereign has certain expectations of citizens: they should obey and honour the
sovereign as they obey and honour God. Analyzing Hobbes's concepts of mimesis,
aisthesis and honouring reveals how Hobbes aimed to construct a political
object, the State, that would effect the whole sense experience of the subject.
It shows that Hobbes's political thought is not only a legal political thought,
but is based also on a thoroughly new setting of esthetical, ontological and
semiotic politics.”
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1600910X.2011.579491#preview
[20] I – 5 “Of so
little weight are the greatest services to princes, when put into the balance
with a refusal to gratify their passions.”
It could also
be an echo of Machiavelli statement about the role of fear in governing.
Machiavelli,
N. “The Prince.” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm#link2HCH0017
See
especially Chapter XVII — Concerning Cruelty and Clemency, and whether it is better to be loved than
feared: “Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than
feared or feared than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be
both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much
safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with.
Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful,
fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours
entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is
said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn
against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has
neglected other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained
by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned,
but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men
have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for
love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of
men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you
by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
[21] I – 5 “They began with many compliments upon my valour
and generosity, invited me to that kingdom in the emperor their master’s name,
and desired me to show them some proofs of my prodigious strength, of which
they had heard so many wonders; wherein I readily obliged them, but shall not
trouble the reader with the particulars.”
“I desired
his general license to wait on the Blefuscudian monarch, which he was pleased
to grant me, as I could perceive, in a very cold manner; but could not guess
the reason, till I had a whisper from a certain person, “that Flimnap and
Bolgolam had represented my intercourse with those ambassadors as a mark of
disaffection;” from which I am sure my heart was wholly free. And this
was the first time I began to conceive some imperfect idea of courts and
ministers.”
[22] It’s perhaps a wink to Rabelais’ Pantagruel climbing the towers of Notre-Dame's church
just to urinate on the crowd below.
See: Rovillain, Eugène E.
“Jonathan Swift's a Voyage to
Lilliput and the Thousand and One Quarters of an Hour, Tartarian Tales of
Thomas Simon Gueulette.” Modern
Language Notes Vol. 44, No.
6 (Jun., 1929), pp. 362-364. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
[23] I – 1 “These people are most excellent mathematicians,
and arrived to a great perfection in mechanics, by the countenance and
encouragement of the emperor, who is a renowned patron of learning. This prince
has several machines fixed on wheels, for the carriage of trees and other great
weights. He often builds his largest men
of war, whereof some are nine feet long, in the woods where the timber grows,
and has them carried on these engines three or four hundred yards to the sea.”
[24] I – 7 “…that his sacred majesty and the council, who are
your judges, were, in their own consciences, fully convinced of your guilt,
which was a sufficient argument to condemn you to death, without the formal
proofs required by the strict letter of the law.”
“…It was
strictly enjoined, that the project of starving you by degrees should be kept a
secret; but the sentence of putting out your eyes was entered on the books…”
[25] I – 7 “You are very sensible that SkyreshBolgolam”
(galbet, or high-admiral) “has been your mortal enemy, almost ever since your
arrival. His original reasons I know
not; but his hatred is increased since your great success against Blefuscu, by
which his glory as admiral is much obscured.”
[26] I – 3 “I swore and subscribed to these articles with
great cheerfulness and content, although some of them were not sohonourable as
I could have wished; which proceeded wholly from the malice of SkyreshBolgolam,
the high-admiral…”
[27] I – 7 “…that he
had good reasons to think you were a Big-endian in your heart; and, as treason
begins in the heart, before it appears in overt-acts, so he accused you as a
traitor on that account, and therefore insisted you should be put to death.”
[28] I – 7 “…that the services you had performed were, by all
true reasons of state, the great aggravation of your crimes…”
[29] I – 6 “He represented to the emperor “the low condition
of his treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a great discount; that
exchequer bills would not circulate under nine per cent. below par; that I had
cost his majesty above a million and a half of sprugs” (their greatest gold
coin, about the bigness of a spangle) “and, upon the whole, that it would be
advisable in the emperor to take the first fair occasion of dismissing me.”
[30] I – 7 “I had been hitherto, all my life, a stranger to
courts, for which I was unqualified by the meanness of my condition. I had indeed heard and read enough of the
dispositions of great princes and ministers, but never expected to have found
such terrible effects of them, in so remote a country, governed, as I thought,
by very different maxims from those in Europe.”
[31] I – 5 “…although I had done a very eminent piece of service, yet I
could not tell how his majesty might resent the manner by which I had performed
it: for, by the fundamental laws of the realm, it is capital in any person, of
what quality soever, to make water within the precincts of the palace. But I was a little comforted by a message
from his majesty, “that he would give orders to the grand justiciary for
passing my pardon in form:” which, however, I could not obtain; and I was
privately assured, “that the empress, conceiving the greatest abhorrence of
what I had done, removed to the most distant side of the court, firmly resolved
that those buildings should never be repaired for her use: and, in the presence
of her chief confidents could not forbear vowing revenge.”
Lamprecht, Sterling P. Introduction to De Cive. APPLETON-CENTURY-CROFTS, ,
London, 1949
“Hobbes treated reasoning as sedition against
authority, criticism as treason, discussion of policy as a mark of the
dissolution of commonwealth. He seems to have supported the notion that strong
government is one under which reasoning and criticism and discussion are not
visible.”
[32] I – 6 “In choosing persons for all employments, they have
more regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is
necessary to mankind, they believe, that the common size of human understanding
is fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to make
the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only by a few
persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an age: but
they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to be in every man’s
power; the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience and a good
intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country, except where a
course of study is required. But they thought the want of moral virtues was so
far from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that employments
could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified;
and, at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous
disposition, would never be of such fatal consequence to the public weal, as
the practices of a man, whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had
great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his corruptions.”
[33] I – 6 “In like
manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man incapable of holding
any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of
Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd than for a prince
to employ such men as disown the authority under which he acts.”
[34] I – 7 “It was a
custom introduced by this prince and his ministry (very different, as I have
been assured, from the practice of former times,) that after the court had
decreed any cruel execution, either to gratify the monarch’s resentment, or the
malice of a favourite, the emperor always made a speech to his whole council,
expressing his great lenity and tenderness, as qualities known and confessed by
all the world. This speech was
immediately published throughout the kingdom; nor did any thing terrify the
people so much as those encomiums on his majesty’s mercy; because it was
observed, that the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more
inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent. Yet, as to myself, I must confess, having
never been designed for a courtier, either by my birth or education, I was so
ill a judge of things, that I could not discover the lenity and favour of this
sentence, but conceived it (perhaps erroneously) rather to be rigorous than
gentle.”
[35] Ibid.
[36] I – 7 “His lordship did so; and I remained alone, under
many doubts and perplexities of mind.”
[37] I – 7 “…upon pretence of unwillingness to force the
consciences, or destroy the liberties and lives of an innocent people.”
[38] Reilly, Patrick Jonathan
Swift: the brave desponder. Manchester University Press.
Jiang-ping
Fan The Political Allegories &
Allusions in The Voyage to Lilliput
http://students.english.ilstu.edu/jfan/Identity/GulliverTravels2.html
“Possessing a
historian’s foresight of politics, and being convinced that human beings are
the same in all ages, shaken by the same passions, and stirred by the same
interest, Swift successfully uses allegories and allusions in Gulliver’s
Travels to expose the cruelty of the political persecutions.”
Even
though focused in the political background of Lilliput, this essay emphasizes
the vicious circle as essence of politics and human history because passions
drive to the same patterns of human behavior. It is also what G. notes
throughout the narrations of personages died long time ago.
[39] “He was perfectly astonished with the historical account
gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting “it was only a heap
of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the
very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty,
rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.” “
Though this
passage is referred to England or any European country history, ironically most
of these passions drive Lilliputians to judge and eventually condemn Gulliver.
[40] Hobbes, Thomas De
Cive London. Printed by J. G for R. Royston, at the Angel in Ivie-lane.
1651.
“This man's will to hurt ariseth from vain
glory, and the false esteem he hath of his own strength; the other's, from the
necessity of defending himself, his liberty, and his goods, against this man's
violence.” P. 25
For more
coincidences between Swift and Hobbes regard the comprehension of fear role in
human nature, see: Reilly, Patrick Ibid.
[41] IV –8
[42] I – 8 “… “that as for sending me bound, his brother knew
it was impossible; that, although I had deprived him of his fleet, yet he owed
great obligations to me for many good offices I had done him in making the
peace. That, however, both their
majesties would soon be made easy; for I had found a prodigious vessel on the
shore, able to carry me on the sea, which he had given orders to fit up, with
my own assistance and direction; and he hoped, in a few weeks, both empires
would be freed from so insupportable an encumbrance.”…”
[43] I -4 “…that there
are other kingdoms and states in the world inhabited by human creatures as
large as yourself, our philosophers are in much doubt, and would rather
conjecture that you dropped from the moon, or one of the stars…”
[44] II -1 “…as human creatures are observed to be more savage and cruel
in proportion to their bulk”
[45] “…nor did any thing terrify the people so much as those
encomiums on his majesty’s mercy; because it was observed, that the more these
praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and
the sufferer more innocent. …”
[46] II - 6 “But by what I have gathered from your own
relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I
cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of
little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the
earth.”
[47] Hobbes, T. Ibid.“This
man's will to hurt ariseth from vain glory, and the false esteem he hath of his
own strength; the other's, from the necessity of defending himself, his
liberty, and his goods, against this man's violence.”
“The cause of
mutual fear consists partly in the natural equality of men, partly in their
mutual will of hurting: whence it comes to pass that we can neither expect from
others, nor promise to ourselves the least security.”
II -7 “…for, in the course of many ages, they have
been troubled with the same disease to which the whole race of mankind is
subject; the nobility often contending for power, the people for liberty, and
the king for absolute dominion.”
[48] IV - 12 “… among which the least corrupted are the Brobdingnagians;
whose wise maxims in morality and government it would be our happiness to
observe.”
I - 4 “…that
there are other kingdoms and states in the world inhabited by human creatures
as large as yourself, our philosophers are in much doubt, and would rather
conjecture that you dropped from the moon, or one of the stars…”
[49] I -“But having in my life perused many state-trials,
which I ever observed to terminate as the judges thought fit to direct, I durst
not rely on so dangerous a decision, in so critical a juncture, and against
such powerful enemies.”
II-“And as I
have been always told, and found true by experience in my travels, that flying
or discovering fear before a fierce animal, is a certain way to make it pursue
or attack you, so I resolved, in this dangerous juncture, to show no manner of
concern.”
[50] II –6 “I did not
omit even our sports and pastimes, or any other particular which I thought
might redound to the honour of my country.”
[51] II – 3 “The more my Master got by me, the more insatiable
he grew.”
[52] II – 3 “She said, her papa and mamma had promised that
Grildrig should be hers; but now she found they meant to serve her as they did
last year, when they pretended to give her a lamb, and yet, as soon as it was
fat, sold it to a butcher.”
[53] II –3 “…and that I
had lived several years, as it was manifest from my beard, the stumps whereof
they plainly discovered through a magnifying glass…”
II – 3 “The
queen […] was […] surprised at so much wit and good sense in so diminutive an
animal.”
[54] I –1 “I remember
when I was at Lilliput, the complexion of those diminutive people appeared to
me the fairest in the world; and talking upon this subject with a person of
learning there, who was an intimate friend of mine, he said that my face
appeared much fairer and smoother when he looked on me from the ground, than it
did upon a nearer view, when I took him up in my hand, and brought him close,
which he confessed was at first a very shocking sight.”
[55] II –3 “They all
agreed that I could not be produced according to the regular laws of nature,
because I was not framed with a capacity of preserving my life, either by
swiftness, or climbing of trees, or digging holes in the earth. They observed by my teeth, which they viewed
with great exactness, that I was a carnivorous animal; yet most quadrupeds
being an overmatch for me, and field mice, with some others, too nimble, they
could not imagine how I should be able to support myself, unless I fed upon
snails and other insects, which they offered, by many learned arguments, to
evince that I could not possibly do. One
of these virtuosi seemed to think that I might be an embryo, or abortive
birth. But this opinion was rejected by
the other two, who observed my limbs to be perfect and finished; and that I had
lived several years, as it was manifest from my beard, the stumps whereof they
plainly discovered through a magnifying glass.
They would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my littleness was beyond
all degrees of comparison; for the queen’s favourite dwarf, the smallest ever
known in that kingdom, was near thirty feet high.”
[56] II –3 “that I came
from a country which abounded with several millions of both sexes, and of my
own stature; where the animals, trees, and houses, were all in proportion, and
where, by consequence, I might be as able to defend myself, and to find
sustenance, as any of his majesty’s subjects could do here; which I took for a
full answer to those gentlemen’s arguments.” To this they only replied
with a smile of contempt, saying, “that the farmer had instructed me very well
in my lesson.”
[57] II - 1
“…Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that
nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison. It might have pleased fortune, to have let the
Lilliputians find some nation, where the people were as diminutive with respect
to them, as they were to me. And who
knows but that even this prodigious race of mortals might be equally
overmatched in some distant part of the world, whereof we have yet no
discovery.”
[58] II – 3 “For, after having been accustomed several months
to the sight and converse of this people, and observed every object upon which
I cast mine eyes to be of proportionable magnitude, the horror I had at first
conceived from their bulk and aspect was so far worn off, that if I had then
beheld a company of English lords and ladies in their finery and birth-day
clothes, acting their several parts in the most courtly manner of strutting,
and bowing, and prating, to say the truth, I should have been strongly tempted
to laugh as much at them as the king and his grandees did at me.”
[59] II – “They would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my
littleness was beyond all degrees of comparison; for the queen’s favourite
dwarf, the smallest ever known in that kingdom, was near thirty feet high.”
[60] “…for I could not tell to what extremities such a
malicious urchin might have carried his resentment.”
[61] II – “But as I was not in a condition to resent injuries,
so upon mature thoughts I began to doubt whether I was injured or no. For, after having been accustomed several
months to the sight and converse of this people, and observed every object upon
which I cast mine eyes to be of proportionable magnitude, the horror I had at
first conceived from their bulk and aspect was so far worn off, that if I had
then beheld a company of English lords and ladies in their finery and birth-day
clothes, acting their several parts in the most courtly manner of strutting,
and bowing, and prating, to say the truth, I should have been strongly tempted
to laugh as much at them as the king and his grandees did at me. Neither, indeed, could I forbear smiling at
myself, when the queen used to place me upon her hand towards a looking-glass,
by which both our persons appeared before me in full view together; and there
could be nothing more ridiculous than the comparison; so that I really began to
imagine myself dwindled many degrees below my usual size.”
[62] II - “A strange effect of narrow principles and views!
that a prince possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and
esteem; of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with
admirable talents, and almost adored by his subjects, should, from a nice,
unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an
opportunity put into his hands that would have made him absolute master of the
lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people!”
[63]Lynall, Gregory Swift’s Caricatures of Newton. In:
Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
It is true
that Newtonian principle of Universal gravitation was no more than an empirical
hypothesis (theory), which would be furtherly tested. Though referred to basic
facts in nature (the falling of any object), it could not pass of being more
than hypothesis as referred to specific conditions in Hearth, as it has been
proved outer space.
[64] II – 5 “I am sure to me was very far from being a
tempting sight, or from giving me any other emotions than those of horror and
disgust: their skins appeared so coarse and uneven, so variously coloured, when
I saw them near, with a mole here and there as broad as a trencher, and hairs
hanging from it thicker than packthreads,…”
II – 5
“The handsomest among these maids of honour, a pleasant, frolicsome girl
of sixteen, would sometimes set me astride upon one of her nipples, with many
other tricks, wherein the reader will excuse me for not being over
particular. But I was so much
displeased, that I entreated Glumdalclitch to contrive some excuse for not
seeing that young lady any more.”
[65] II – 7 “The
learning of these people is very
defective, consisting only in morality, history, poetry, and mathematics,
wherein they must be allowed to excel.
But the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful in life,
to the improvement of agriculture, and all mechanical arts;…”
[66] I – 6 “Their
parents are suffered to see them only twice a year; the visit is to last but an
hour; they are allowed to kiss the child at meeting and parting; but a
professor, who always stands by on those occasions, will not suffer them to
whisper, or use any fondling expressions, or bring any presents of toys,
sweetmeats, and the like.”
[67] II – 6 “I one day took the freedom to tell his majesty,
“that the contempt he discovered towards Europe, and the rest of the world, did
not seem answerable to those excellent qualities of mind that he was master of;
that reason did not extend itself with the bulk of the body; on the contrary,
we observed in our country, that the tallest persons were usually the least
provided with it; that among other animals, bees and ants had the reputation of
more industry, art, and sagacity, than many of the larger kinds; and that, as
inconsiderable as he took me to be, I hoped I might live to do his majesty some
signal service.” …”
[68] II – 5 “This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is
for a man to endeavour to do himself honour among those who are out of all
degree of equality or comparison with him.”
[69] II – “What qualifications were necessary in those who are
to be created new lords: whether the humour of the prince, a sum of money to a
court lady, or a design of strengthening a party opposite to the public
interest, ever happened to be the motive in those advancements? What share of knowledge these lords had in
the laws of their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to
decide the properties of their fellow-subjects in the last resort? Whether they were always so free from
avarice, partialities, or want, that a bribe, or some other sinister view,
could have no place among them?”
[70] II – 7 “He was perfectly astonished with the historical
account gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting “it was
only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments,
the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness,
cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, could
produce.”
“… you have clearly proved, that ignorance,
idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator…”
[71] Ibidem “I
artfully eluded many of his questions, and gave to every point a more
favourable turn, by many degrees, than the strictness of truth would
allow. For I have always borne that
laudable partiality to my own country, which Dionysius Halicarnassensis, with
so much justice, recommends to an historian: I would hide the frailties and
deformities of my political mother, and place her virtues and beauties in the
most advantageous light.”
[72] Ibid. “He said,
“he knew no reason why those, who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public,
should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them.
And as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was
weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in
his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials.”…”
[73] Pascal, Blaise Thoughts.
Section II. The Misery Of Man Without God. Epig. 60 (April 27, 2006 [EBook
#18269])
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm
“But to show him another prodigy equally
astonishing, let him examine the most delicate things he knows. Let a mite be
given him, with its minute body and parts incomparably more minute, limbs with
their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood,
drops in the humours, vapours in the drops. Dividing these last things again,
let him exhaust his powers of conception, and let the last object at which he
can arrive be now that of our discourse. Perhaps he will think that here is the
smallest point in nature. I will let him see therein a new abyss. I will paint
for him not only the visible universe, but all that he can conceive of nature’s
immensity in the womb of this abridged atom. Let him see therein an infinity of
universes, each of which has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same
proportion as in the visible world; in each earth animals, and in the last
mites, in which he will find again all that the first had, finding still in
these others the same thing without end and without cessation. Let him lose
himself in wonders as amazing in their littleness as the others in their
vastness. For who will not be astounded at the fact that our body, which a
little ago was imperceptible, in the universe, itself imperceptible in the
bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, in respect
of the nothingness which we cannot reach? He who regards himself in this light
will be afraid of himself, and observing himself sustained in the body given
him by nature between those two abysses of the Infinite and Nothing, will
tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I think that, as his curiosity
changes into admiration, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in
silence than to examine them with presumption.”
Compare to II
– 1 “Undoubtedly philosophers are in the
right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by
comparison. It might have pleased fortune, to have let the Lilliputians find
some nation, where the people were as diminutive with respect to them, as they
were to me. And who knows but that even this prodigious race of mortals might
be equally overmatched in some distant part of the world, whereof we have yet
no discovery.”
The idea of
worlds within worlds is obviously
shared for these two thinkers and so many others at least since the microscopic
world was discovered. However, regarding
Pascal’s influences on Swift’s GT, it hardly could be stated. See; Émile Pons ``Swift et Pascal.” Les
langues modernes 45 (1951): 135-5ed
[74] II – 7 “I was the
favourite of a great king and queen, and the delight of the whole court; but it
was upon such a foot as ill became the dignity of humankind.”
[75] II – 8 “For
indeed, while I was in that prince’s country, I could never endure to look in a
glass, after mine eyes had been accustomed to such prodigious objects, because
the comparison gave me so despicable a conceit of myself…”
II – 5 “This
made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavour to do himself
honour among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with
him.”
II – 3
“Neither, indeed, could I forbear smiling at myself, when the queen used to
place me upon her hand towards a looking-glass, by which both our persons
appeared before me in full view together; and there could be nothing more
ridiculous than the comparison; so that I really began to imagine myself
dwindled many degrees below my usual size.”
II – 3 “They
would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my littleness was beyond all degrees
of comparison…”
II – 1 “Undoubtedly
philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or
little otherwise than by comparison. It might have pleased fortune, to have let
the Lilliputians find some nation, where the people were as diminutive with
respect to them, as they were to me. And who knows but that even this
prodigious race of mortals might be equally overmatched in some distant part of
the world, whereof we have yet no discovery.”
("man is
the measure of all things", as Protagoras stated)
[76] II – 7 “it was very reasonable to think, not only that
the species of men were originally much larger, but also that there must have
been giants in former ages; which, as it is asserted by history and tradition,
so it has been confirmed by huge bones and skulls, casually dug up in several
parts of the kingdom, far exceeding the common dwindled race of men in our
days.”
[77] Ibidem “From this way of reasoning, the author drew
several moral applications, useful in the conduct of life, but needless here to
repeat. For my own part, I could not avoid reflecting how universally this
talent was spread, of drawing lectures in morality, or indeed rather matter of
discontent and repining, from the quarrels we raise with nature. And I believe,
upon a strict inquiry, those quarrels might be shown as ill-grounded among us
as they are among that people.”
Moral
attributes of nature arises from such quarrels by morally understanding nature
and by ascribing to it meanings only attributable to some human actions. It
seems that Gulliver shares Newtonian mechanics vision of nature, which does not
attribute any purposes, passions or moral values to it, though nature entitles
passional features to every one of its creatures. Nature itself does not know passions (hatred,
envy, love, hope, remorse, evil, good, wants, ambition, fear…), but it would be
the only source of passions and reason in its creatures if any other unnatural
source were excluded.
[78] Ibid. “He said, “he knew no reason why those, who
entertain opinions prejudicial to the public, should be obliged to change, or
should not be obliged to conceal them.
And as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was
weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in
his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials.”…”
[79] Ibid. “…All which, however happily tempered by the laws
of that kingdom, have been sometimes violated by each of the three parties, and
have more than once occasioned civil wars;…”
[80] IV – 12 “I shall say nothing of those remote nations
where Yahoos preside; among which the least corrupted are the Brobdingnagians;
whose wise maxims in morality and government it would be our happiness to
observe.”
[81] II – 6“…As for yourself,” continued the king, “who have
spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope
you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own
relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I
cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of
little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the
earth.”
II – “…I had
always a strong impulse that I should some time recover my liberty,… He was
strongly bent to get me a woman of my own size, by whom I might propagate the
breed: but I think I should rather have died than undergone the disgrace of
leaving a posterity to be kept in cages, like tame canary-birds, and perhaps,
in time, sold about the kingdom, to persons of quality, for curiosities. I was
indeed treated with much kindness: I was the favourite of a great king and
queen, and the delight of the whole court; but it was upon such a foot as ill
became the dignity of humankind. I could never forget those domestic pledges I
had left behind me. I wanted to be among people, with whom I could converse
upon even terms, and walk about the streets and fields without being afraid of
being trod to death like a frog or a young puppy.”
[82] II – 6 “…you have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice,
are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best
explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie
in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.
I observe among you some lines of an institution, which, in its
original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly
blurred and blotted by corruptions.”
[83] III – 2 “…but I
rather take this quality to spring from a very common infirmity of human
nature, inclining us to be most curious and conceited in matters where we have
least concern, and for which we are least adapted by study or nature.”
[84] Ibidem “It
seems the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that
they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being
roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for
which reason, those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper
(the original is climenole) in their family, as one of their domestics; nor
ever walk abroad, or make visits, without him.
And the business of this officer is, when two, three, or more persons
are in company, gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to
speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses
himself. This flapper is likewise
employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to
give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in
cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and
bouncing his head against every post; and in the streets, of justling others,
or being justled himself into the kennel.”
Ibid. “And although they are dexterous enough upon
a piece of paper, in the management of the rule, the pencil, and the divider,
yet in the common actions and behaviour of life, I have not seen a more clumsy,
awkward, and unhandy people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conceptions
upon all other subjects, except those of mathematics and music. They are very bad reasoners, and vehemently
given to opposition, unless when they happen to be of the right opinion, which
is seldom their case. Imagination,
fancy, and invention, they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words in their
language, by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole compass of their
thoughts and mind being shut up within the two forementioned sciences.”
[85] Ibid. “They are
so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these, and the like impending
dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in their beds, nor have any relish
for the common pleasures and amusements of life. When they meet an acquaintance in the
morning, the first question is about the sun’s health, how he looked at his
setting and rising, and what hopes they have to avoid the stroke of the
approaching comet. This conversation
they are apt to run into with the same temper that boys discovering delighting to hear terrible
stories of spirits and hobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not
go to bed for fear.”
[86] Ibid. “Their
apprehensions arise from several changes they dread in the celestial bodies:
for instance, that the earth, by the continual approaches of the sun towards
it, must, in course of time, be absorbed, or swallowed up; that the face of the
sun, will, by degrees, be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give no more
light to the world; that the earth very narrowly escaped a brush from the tail
of the last comet, which would have infallibly reduced it to ashes; and that
the next, which they have calculated for one-and-thirty years hence, will
probably destroy us.”
[87] III – 4 “…that
some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but were looked
on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art, ignorant, and ill
common-wealth’s men, preferring their own ease and sloth before the general
improvement of their country.”…”
“that being
then not very well with the court, and pressed by many of his friends, he
complied with the proposal; and after employing a hundred men for two years,
the work miscarried, the projectors went off, laying the blame entirely upon
him, railing at him ever since, and putting others upon the same experiment,
with equal assurance of success, as well as equal disappointment.”
[88] III – “The first project was, to shorten discourse, by
cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because,
in reality, all things imaginable are but norms.
The other
project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this
was urged as a great advantage in point of health, as well as brevity.”
[This parody
seems aimed at Berkeley
subjectivism. As any other passion brought to extremes, speculation ends
speechless, but Swift’s mockery by reductio ad
absurdum does not refer to any mystical conclusion about ineffability, but just
to the consequences of following speculative postulates (esse est percipii) in
ordinary life.]
[89] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/
“First, there
is the thesis that every virtue is a state that lies between two vices, one of
excess and the other of deficiency.”
[90] I – 1 “He acted every part of an orator, and I could
observe many periods of threatenings, and others of promises, pity, and
kindness.”
[91] Marzola, Alessandra “Hamlet
and the Passion of Knowledge”. In: Thinking
with Shakespeare. pp. 203-220 (January 2014)
From this
point of view, G. seems a Shakespearian character, Hamlet in this case, whose
inquiry is guided by passions (irresistible desire) rather than by reason,
though their respective
motivations apparently seem very different. Both characters are driven by a
strong desire to know the past, though their
personal implications in it does not have any point
of comparison.
[92] III – 7 “And one
thing I might depend upon, that they would certainly tell me the truth, for
lying was a talent of no use in the lower world.”
[93] III – 8 “I had the curiosity to inquire in a particular
manner, by what methods great numbers had procured to themselves high titles of
honour, and prodigious estates;”
“I had often
read of some great services done to princes and states, and desired to see the
persons by whom those services were performed.
Upon inquiry I was told, “that their names were to be found on no
record, except a few of them, whom history has represented as the vilest of
rogues and traitors.” As to the rest, I
had never once heard of them. They all
appeared with dejected looks, and in the meanest habit; most of them telling
me, “they died in poverty and disgrace, and the rest on a scaffold or a
gibbet.”…”
[94] Ibidem “This
great philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy,
because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he
found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as he
could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally to be exploded. He predicted the same fate to attraction,
whereof the present learned are such zealous asserters. He said, “that new systems of nature were but
new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those, who pretend to
demonstrate them from mathematical principles, would flourish but a short
period of time, and be out of vogue when that was determined.” …”
[95] Swift’s opinion regard the quarrel between Ancients and
Moderns does not keep equidistant since Ancients seem to establish
unsurpassable canons. But, paradoxically, Swift himself might be cataloged as
modern if this concept means innovation in literary style regarding his
antecessors, and creating a paradigm in English language to further
generations. Obviously, it was possible for having a solid background in
classic languages.
Damrosch, Leo
Jonathan Swift: His Life and his World.
Yale University Pressbooks, London, 2013
http://books.google.com/books?id=Cdo_AQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false
See
especially “Boarding School Boy”
[96] III – 8 “I was surprised to find corruption grown so high
and so quick in that empire, by the force of luxury so lately introduced; which
made me less wonder at many parallel cases in other countries, where vices of
all kinds have reigned so much longer, and where the whole praise, as well as
pillage, has been engrossed by the chief commander, who perhaps had the least
title to either.”
[97] Animals alike toddlers cannot feel fear to death for not
having the concept of dying, though animals try to avoid pain and usually
surpass humans in foreseeing perils or painful and dangerous situations. Death
is not a feeling but a concept and reality at once. They cannot feel fear to
death because they are not conscious (aware)
ofthe differences between being alive or death.
http://www.grandin.com/inc/animals.in.translation.ch5.html
http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=3119
[98] III – 10 “When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned
the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and
infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful
prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous,
morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural
affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their
prevailing passions. But those objects
against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the
younger sort and the deaths of the old.
By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all
possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and
repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves
never can hope to arrive. They have no
remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and
middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars
of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best
recollections. The least miserable among
them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories;
these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities
which abound in others.”
[99] Ibidem “Envy
and impotent desires are their prevailing passions.”
[100] IV – 10 “Whereas a
traveller’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve
their minds by the bad, as well as good, example of what they deliver
concerning foreign places.”
[101] IV – 4 “…because their wants and passions are fewer than
among us.”
IV – 7 “As
these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with a general disposition to all
virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational
creature, so their grand maxim is, to cultivate reason, and to be wholly
governed by it. Neither is reason among
them a point problematical, as with us, where men can argue with plausibility
on both sides of the question, but strikes you with immediate conviction; as it
must needs do, where it is not mingled, obscured, or discoloured, by passion
and interest.”
[102] IV – 2 “The master horse ordered a sorrel nag, one of his
servants, to untie the largest of these animals, and take him into the
yard. The beast and I were brought close
together, and by our countenances diligently compared both by master and
servant, who thereupon repeated several times the word Yahoo. My horror and astonishment are not to be
described, when I observed in this abominable animal, a perfect human figure:
the face of it indeed was flat and broad, the nose depressed, the lips large,
and the mouth wide; but these differences are common to all savage nations,
where the lineaments of the countenance are distorted, by the natives suffering
their infants to lie grovelling on the earth, or by carrying them on their
backs, nuzzling with their face against the mothers’ shoulders. The fore-feet of the Yahoo differed from my
hands in nothing else but the length of the nails, the coarseness and brownness
of the palms, and the hairiness on the backs.
There was the same resemblance between our feet, with the same
differences; which I knew very well, though the horses did not, because of my
shoes and stockings; the same in every part of our bodies except as to hairiness
and colour, which I have already described.
The great
difficulty that seemed to stick with the two horses, was to see the rest of my
body so very different from that of a Yahoo, for which I was obliged to my
clothes, whereof they had no conception.
The sorrel nag offered me a root, which he held (after their manner, as
we shall describe in its proper place) between his hoof and pastern; I took it
in my hand, and, having smelt it, returned it to him again as civilly as I
could. He brought out of the Yahoos’
kennel a piece of ass’s flesh; but it smelt so offensively that I turned from
it with loathing: he then threw it to the Yahoo, by whom it was greedily
devoured. He afterwards showed me a wisp
of hay, and a fetlock full of oats; but I shook my head, to signify that
neither of these were food for me. …”
[103] Ibidem “And
indeed I now apprehended that I must absolutely starve, if I did not get to
some of my own species; for as to those filthy Yahoos, although there were few
greater lovers of mankind at that time than myself, yet I confess I never saw
any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts; and the more I came near
them the more hateful they grew, while I stayed in that country.”
[104] IV – 3 “Several horses and mares of quality in the
neighbourhood came often to our house, upon the report spread of “a wonderful
Yahoo, that could speak like a Houyhnhnm, and seemed, in his words and actions,
to discover some glimmerings of reason.”
[105] Ibidem “I requested likewise, “that the secret of my
having a false covering to my body, might be known to none but himself, at
least as long as my present clothing should last; for as to what the sorrel
nag, his valet, had observed, his honour might command him to conceal it.”…”
[106] For G. the use of attire and garments to conceal and thus
to lie is a general trend of human nature, not only pertaining to female, even
though the feminine use of them is more conspicuous in some cultural contexts.
A detailed
analysis from a feminist perspective of Swift’s understanding of clothes and
garments as feminine disguises can be found in:
Ktenas, Stella Gender Performance in Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room” Philament Volume 23 • 2017
“Celia has collected the garments for their
presentational or performative uses rather than for the mere utility of body
covering clothing. Dresses, handkerchiefs, and gloves are equintessentially
theatrical items, integral components that mark one’s sartorial identity. The
significations of these elements of costume denote not only Celia’s abjection,
however, but her role as a woman: they indicate the way in which Celia plays
her role as woman and—just as any theatrical role requires backstage
preparation—so does Celia’s role require that she maintains her sartorial
identity and masquerade.” Pg.15-16
IV – 6 “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.”
[107] IV – 4 “…for their language does
not abound in variety of words, because their wants and passions are fewer than
among us…”
[108] Ibidem “…if any
one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated, because I cannot
properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving information,
that he leaves me worse than in ignorance; for I am led to believe a thing
black, when it is white, and short, when it is long.” And these were all
the notions he had concerning that faculty of lying, so perfectly well
understood, and so universally practised, among human creatures.”
The Latin
root for conviction makes reference to vincere [to win, to
defeat, and ultimately to conquer]
[109] IV – 8 “I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I
could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a
point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only
where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either. So that controversies, wranglings, disputes,
and positiveness, in false or dubious propositions, are evils unknown among the
Houyhnhnms. In the like manner, when I
used to explain to him our several systems of natural philosophy, he would laugh,
“that a creature pretending to reason, should value itself upon the knowledge
of other people’s conjectures, and in things where that knowledge, if it were
certain, could be of no use.” …”
[110] IV – 5 “…considering the frame of our bodies, and
especially of mine, … no creature of equal bulk was so ill-contrived for
employing that reason in the common offices of life…”
[111] Ibid. – “…for
their language does not abound in variety of words, because their wants and
passions are fewer than among us.”
[112] Ibid. - “…He
asked me, “what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to
war with another?”… “
[113] Ibid.-“…“What
you have told me,” said my master, “upon the subject of war, does indeed
discover most admirably the effects of that reason you pretend to: however, it
is happy that the shame is greater than the danger; and that nature has left
you utterly incapable of doing much mischief. …”
[114] Ibid. “But when
a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded
lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself. He seemed therefore confident, that, instead
of reason we were only possessed of some quality fitted to increase our natural
vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream returns the image of an ill
shapen body, not only larger but more distorted.”…”
[115] IV – 7 “…“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…”
[116] IV – 5 “It is
likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and jargon of
their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are
written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly
confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong…”
[117] IV - 6 “Therefore since money alone was able to perform
all these feats, our Yahoos thought they could never have enough of it to
spend, or to save, as they found themselves inclined, from their natural bent
either to profusion or avarice; that the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the poor
man’s labour, and the latter were a thousand to one in proportion to the
former; that the bulk of our people were forced to live miserably, by labouring
every day for small wages, to make a few live plentifully.”
[118] Ibidem “He could easily conceive, that a
Houyhnhnms, grew weak and heavy a few days before his death, or by some
accident might hurt a limb; but that nature, who works all things to
perfection, should suffer any pains to breed in our bodies, he thought
impossible, and desired to know the reason of so unaccountable an evil.”
[119] Swift uses the stoic-Aristotelian teleology (maybe St.
Thomas’ version of that) as Houyhnhnms’ wisdom or moral criteria, which is:
follow nature in all its trends.
[120] IV – 6 “…that a first or chief minister of state, who was
the person I intended to describe, was the creature wholly exempt from joy and
grief, love and hatred, pity and anger; at least, makes use of no other
passions, but a violent desire of wealth, power, and titles; that he applies
his words to all uses, except to the indication of his mind; that he never
tells a truth but with an intent that you should take it for a lie; nor a lie,
but with a design that you should take it for a truth; that those he speaks
worst of behind their backs are in the surest way of preferment…”
[121] IV – 7 “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…”
[122] Ibidem “…in the
contemplation and practice of every virtue, where I could have no example or
incitement to vice…”
[123] IV – 5 “Here my master interposing, said, “it was a pity,
that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind, as these
lawyers, by the description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather
encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge.”…”
[124] IV – 7 “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.”
[125] Varona, Enrique Jose
“There is more in men than in animals, but not anything essentially
different” Obras de Enrique José Varona
...: Literatura III: Violetas y ortigas
[126] IV – 7
[127] IV – 8 “Nature has
taught them to dig deep holes with their nails on the side of a rising ground,
wherein they lie by themselves; only the kennels of the females are larger,
sufficient to hold two or three cubs.”
[128] IV – 7 “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…
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.”
[129] IV-7 “ 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.” (the underlined text is our)
[130] IV- 8 “I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I
could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a
point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only
where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either. So
that controversies, wranglings, disputes, and positiveness, in false or dubious
propositions, are evils unknown among the Houyhnhnms.
In the like manner, when I used to explain to him our several systems of
natural philosophy, he would laugh, “that a creature pretending to reason,
should value itself upon the knowledge of other people’s conjectures, and in
things where that knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use.”
Wherein he agreed entirely with the sentiments of Socrates, as Plato delivers
them; which I mention as the highest honour I can do that prince of
philosophers. I have often since reflected, what destruction such
doctrine would make in the libraries of Europe; and how many paths of fame
would be then shut up in the learned world.”
[131] IV-7 “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.”
[132] This concept has been borrowed from Max Weber’s
philosophy to name Gulliver’s description of Houyhnhnms principal virtues.
See: Bellah,
Robert N. “Max Weber and World-Denying
Love: A Look at the Historical Sociology of Religion”
http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_3.htm
Liebesakosmismus: "World-denying love" is a more accessible
English translation, but even that reverses the German noun and adjective.
"World-denying love;' as opposed to worldly love, which is always love for
particular persons, is love for all, without distinction--love for whoever
comes, friends, strangers, enemies—“
[133] IV – 8 “They will have it that nature teaches them to
love the whole species, and it is reason only that makes a distinction of
persons, where there is a superior degree of virtue.”
[134] IV- 8 “In their marriages, they are exactly careful to
choose such colours as will not make any disagreeable mixture in the
breed. Strength is chiefly valued in the
male, and comeliness in the female; not upon the account of love, but to
preserve the race from degenerating; for where a female happens to excel in
strength, a consort is chosen, with regard to comeliness.”
[135] IV - 8 “…whereby, as he truly observed, one half of our
natives were good for nothing but bringing children into the world; and to
trust the care of our children to such useless animals, he said, was yet a
greater instance of brutality.”
[136] IV - 9 “…the Houyhnhnms
have no word in their language to express any thing that is evil, except what
they borrow from the deformities or ill qualities of the Yahoos.“
[137] IV – 10 “…because he found I had cured myself of some bad
habits and dispositions, by endeavouring, as far as my inferior nature was
capable, to imitate the Houyhnhnms.”…”
[138]IV – 4 “But he
insisted in commanding me to let him know the best and the worst.”
[139] IV -7 “But the race of inferior Houyhnhnms, bred up to be
servants, is not so strictly limited upon this article: these are allowed to
produce three of each sex, to be domestics in the noble families.
In their
marriages, they are exactly careful to choose such colours as will not make any
disagreeable mixture in the breed.
Strength is chiefly valued in the male, and comeliness in the female;
not upon the account of love, but to preserve the race from degenerating; for
where a female happens to excel in strength, a consort is chosen, with regard
to comeliness.”
[140] Could this
“imitation” be a serious parody of “imitatio Christi”? Imitatio Christi does
not mean someone might become Christ, but only follow his example.
[141] IV – 8 “They will have it that nature teaches them to
love the whole species, and it is reason only that makes a distinction of
persons, where there is a superior degree of virtue.”
[142] Nevertheless, these questions need a more detailed study
on Swift’s reception of Platonism than it might be done here. However, it could
not be fully sustained that GT is basically a parody of Plato’s Republic
without having in mind that the main ideas regards human capacity to be driven
by reason are retaken in Plato’s Laws whith a more realistic perspective. Of
course, it could be very difficult for Swift, if not impossible at all, having
considered the Laws as a Platonic work because it was very dubious at this time
to attribute this work to Plato as Jaeger states in his book “Paideia: The
ideals of Greek culture”.
If it were a
parody of Plato’s Republic, then it would be hard to comprehend why GT ends
with a very realistic –someone would say bitter - reflection on human nature
which does not neglect Plato as truth lover, as Gulliver in fact is also, but
rectifies the later rationalistic assumptions of reason as an absolute guide in
human nature. Another question would be if Houyhnhnms could be considered truth-lovers
or only rational and passionless creatures, incapable of knowing evil?
[143] IV – 9 “The question to be debated was, “whether the Yahoos should be exterminated from the
face of the earth?”…”
[144] It is known how Voltaire’s “Candide, ou l'Optimisme” and Micromegas
parodie both Christian Wolf and G.W. Leibniz teleology regards their optimist outcomes. Houyhnhnms do not
understand what the evil place in their world is, but Wolf-Leibniz intended to
explain it as something necessary to keep working the universal harmony or
being a part of such harmony.
[145] IV – 9 “… “that Yahoos had not been always in their
country; but that many ages ago, two of these brutes appeared together upon a
mountain; whether produced by the heat of the sun upon corrupted mud and slime,
or from the ooze and froth of the sea, was never known; that these Yahoos
engendered, and their brood, in a short time, grew so numerous as to overrun
and infest the whole nation…”
[146] It looks like a
parody of Genesis' account of Adam and Eve’s creation.
[147] IV -4 “…that natural awe, which the Yahoos and all other
animals bear toward them…”
“…the most
unteachable of all animals: their capacity never reaching higher than to draw
or carry burden. … this defect arises chiefly from a perverse, restive
disposition; for they are cunning, malicious, treacherous, and revengeful. They are strong and hardy, but of a cowardly
spirit, and, by consequence, insolent, abject, and cruel. …”
[148] IV – 4 “…because their wants and passions are fewer than
among us…”
[149] IV – 12 “… to lament the brutality of [to (internet edition)] Houyhnhnms in my own country, but
always treat their persons with respect, for the sake of my noble master, his
family, his friends, and the whole Houyhnhnm race, whom these of ours have the
honour to resemble in all their lineaments, however their intellectuals came
to degenerate.” (The underline text is our emphasis)
[150] In another twist Swift states that “Beasts may degenerate
into men” as G’s Master also stated by saying that reason seems to be a faculty
to corrupt passions. There is not room to fear that reason could be corrupt by
passions
[151] IV – 10 “… and if ever I returned to England, was not
without hopes of being useful to my own species, by celebrating the praises of
the renowned Houyhnhnms, and proposing their virtues to the imitation of
mankind.”
[152] IV - 10
[153] A LETTER FROM CAPTAIN GULLIVER TO HIS COUSIN SYMPSON.
“And it must be owned, that seven months were a sufficient time to correct
every vice and folly to which Yahoos
are subject, if their natures had been capable of the least disposition to
virtue or wisdom.”
Such
questioning may have been formulated as follow: Could human imitate virtues? Is
this an effective deterrent (method, way) for placating passions? Are virtues
innate dispositions (part of human nature) as passions seem to be?
[154] IV -11 “The first money I laid out was to buy two young
stone-horses, which I keep in a good stable; and next to them, the groom is my
greatest favourite, for I feel my spirits revived by the smell he contracts in
the stable. My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at
least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live
in great amity with me and friendship to each other.”
IV -12 “…to lament the brutality to Houyhnhnms in
my own country, but always treat their persons with respect, for the sake of my
noble master, his family, his friends, and the whole Houyhnhnm race, whom these
of ours have the honour to resemble in all their lineaments, however their
intellectuals came to degenerate. …”
[155] VI -7 “…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,…”
[156] GULLIVER description of Hs. customs seems being inspired
by Spartan customs related by Xenophon’s Lycurgus
and Plutarch’s The Ancient Customs of the
Spartans.
[157] IV – 10 “…I
admired the strength, comeliness, and speed of the inhabitants; and such a
constellation of virtues, in such amiable persons, produced in me the highest
veneration. At first, indeed, I did not
feel that natural awe, which the Yahoos and all other animals bear toward them;
but it grew upon me by decrees, much sooner than I imagined, and was mingled
with a respectful love and gratitude, that they would condescend to distinguish
me from the rest of my species. …”
[158] IV – 10 “…the representatives had taken offence at his
keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his family, more like a Houyhnhnm than a
brute animal; that he was known frequently to converse with me, as if he could
receive some advantage or pleasure in my company; that such a practice was not
agreeable to reason or nature, or a thing ever heard of before among them; the
assembly did therefore exhort him either to employ me like the rest of my
species, or command me to swim back to the place whence I came: that the first
of these expedients was utterly rejected by all the Houyhnhnms who had ever
seen me at his house or their own; for they alleged, that because I had some
rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity of those animals, it was to
be feared I might be able to seduce them into the woody and mountainous parts
of the country, and bring them in troops by night to destroy the Houyhnhnms’
cattle, as being naturally of the ravenous kind, and averse from labour.” …”
[159] Though not quoted directly by G. Hobbes' comprehension of fear as a
source of human features seems to be assumed as
principle to explain why reason could not be explained without reference to
passions.
Hobbes,
T. De
cive
Preface
“Can men give
a clearer testimony of the distrust they have each of other, and all, of all.?
How since they do
thus, and
even countries as well as men, they publicly profess their mutual fear and
diffidence?”
“Unless
therefore we will say that men are naturally evil, because they receive not
their education and use of reason from nature, we must need acknowledge that
men may derive desire, fear, anger, and other passions from nature, and yet not
impute, the evil effects of those unto nature.”
Part I
Liberty
“We must
therefore resolve, that the original of all great and lasting societies
consisted not in the mutual good will men had towards each other, but in the
mutual fear * they had of each other.”
“*It is objected:
it is so improbable that men should grow into civil societies out of fear, that
if they had been afraid, they would not have endured each other's looks. They
presume, I believe, that to fear is nothing else than to be affrighted. I
comprehend in this word fear, a certain foresight of future evil; neither do I
conceive flight the sole property of fear, but to distrust, suspect, take heed,
provide so that they may not fear, is also incident to the fearful. They who go
to sleep, shut their doors; they who travel, carry their swords with them,
because they fear thieves. Kingdoms guard their coasts and frontiers with forts
and castles; cities are compact with walls, and all for fear of neighbouring
kingdoms and towns; even the strongest armies, and most accomplished for fight,
yet sometimes parley for peace, as fearing each other's power, and lest they
might be overcome. It is through fear that men secure themselves, by flight
indeed, and in corners, if they think they cannot escape otherwise;
but for the most
part by arms and defensive weapons; whence it happens, that daring to come
forth, they know each other's spirits; but then, if they fight, civil society
ariseth from the victory, if they agree, from their agreement.”
[160] IV -10 “… “that death would have been too great a
happiness; that although I could not blame the assembly’s exhortation, or the
urgency of his friends; yet, in my weak and corrupt judgment, I thought it
might consist with reason to have been less rigorous; that I could not swim a
league, and probably the nearest land to theirs might be distant above a
hundred: that many materials, necessary for making a small vessel to carry me
off, were wholly wanting in this country; which, however, I would attempt, in
obedience and gratitude to his honour, although I concluded the thing to be
impossible, and therefore looked on myself as already devoted to destruction;
that the certain prospect of an unnatural death was the least of my evils; for,
supposing I should escape with life by some strange adventure, how could I
think with temper of passing my days among Yahoos,
and relapsing into my old corruptions, for want of examples to lead and keep me
within the paths of virtue?...”
[161] IV –10 “…the representatives had taken offence at his
keeping a Yahoo (meaning myself) in his family, more like a Houyhnhnm than a
brute animal; that he was known frequently to converse with me, as if he could
receive some advantage or pleasure in my company; that such a practice was not
agreeable to reason or nature, or a thing ever heard of before among them…”
[162] IV –9 “…that these Yahoos engendered, and their brood, in
a short time, grew so numerous as to overrun and infest the whole nation; that
the Houyhnhnms, to get rid of this evil, made a general hunting, and at last
enclosed the whole herd; and destroying the elder, every Houyhnhnm kept two
young ones in a kennel, and brought them to such a degree of tameness, as an
animal, so savage by nature, can be capable of acquiring, using them for
draught and carriage…”
[163] IV -10 “When I happened to behold the reflection of my
own form in a lake or fountain, I turned away my face in horror and detestation
of myself, and could better endure the sight of a common Yahoo than of my own
person.”
“… quality
fitted to increase our natural vices; as the reflection from a troubled stream
returns the image of an ill shapen body, not only larger but more distorted.”
[164] IV -10 “… if ever I returned to England, was not without
hopes of being useful to my own species, by celebrating the praises of the
renowned Houyhnhnms, and proposing their virtues to the imitation of mankind.”
[165] IV -11 “For in
such a solitude as I desired, I could at least enjoy my own thoughts, and
reflect with delight on the virtues of those inimitable Houyhnhnms, without an
opportunity of degenerating into the vices and corruptions of my own species.”
[166]IV –7 “…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…”
[167]A letter from Captain GULLIVER to his cousin Sympson “…by the instructions and example of my illustrious
master, I was able in the compass of two years (although I confess with the
utmost difficulty) to remove that infernal habit of lying, shuffling,
deceiving, and equivocating, so deeply rooted in the very souls of all my
species; especially the Europeans.”
[168] ON THE TRINITY.
http://www.gutenberGULLIVERorg/cache/epub/12746/pg12746.html
“First: It
would be well, if people would not lay so much weight on their own reason in
matters of religion, as to think everything impossible and absurd which they
cannot conceive. How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the
whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of
every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his
interests, his passions, and his vices. Let any man but consider, when he hath
a controversy with another, although his cause be ever so unjust, although the
world be against him, how blinded he is by the love of himself, to believe that
right is wrong, and wrong is right, when it maketh for his own advantage. Where
is then the right use of his reason, which he so much boasts of, and which he
would blasphemously set up to control the commands of the Almighty?”
[169] IV -2 “I was at first at a great loss for salt, but
custom soon reconciled me to the want of it; and I am confident that the
frequent use of salt among us is an effect of luxury, and was first introduced
only as a provocative to drink… for we observe no animal to be fond of it but man,
and as to myself, when I left this country, it was a great while before I could
endure the taste of it in anything that I ate.”
[170] IV -12 “Whereas a traveller’s chief aim should be to make
men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad, as well as good,
example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.”
These values
are capable of awakening any kind of passion, but ultimately reason through
Eros, which is eventually one the most
powerful passions and could animate reason to discover and venerate such
values. However, as Max Scheler has showed, the ressentiment and others passions could be powerful ways of
subverting these values.
[171] IV – 10 “I freely confess, that all the little knowledge
I have of any value, was acquired by the lectures I received from my master,
and from hearing the discourses of him and his friends; to which I should be
prouder to listen, than to dictate to the greatest and wisest assembly in
Europe.”
[172] IV – 7 “…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.”
[173] IV –2 “…for as to those filthy Yahoos, although there were few greater lovers of mankind at that
time than myself, yet I confess I never saw any sensitive being so detestable
on all accounts; and the more I came near them the more hateful they grew,
while I stayed in that country.”
[174] I – 6 “…that men
and women are joined together, like other animals, by the motives of
concupiscence; and that their tenderness towards their young proceeds from the
like natural principle…”
Such
difference between Hs' and human love could explain the genesis of other human
passions, because nothing else than love supported by desires could generate or
contain fear, hatred, cruelty, immeasurable ambition, lying, resentment …as
potential passions as well as abnegation, perseverance, benevolence,
comeliness, when it is aimed to Goodness, Truth and Beauty.
[175] IV –3 “The word Houyhnhnm, in their tongue,
signifies a horse, and, in its etymology, the perfection of nature.”
[176] Letter to his cousin Sympson. “I wrote for their amendment, and not their
approbation.”
[177] Ibid. “…that the
Yahoos were a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precept or
example: and so it has proved; for, instead of seeing a full stop put to all
abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason to
expect; behold, after above six months warning, I cannot learn that my book has
produced one single effect according to my intentions. I desired you would let me know, by a letter,
when party and faction were extinguished; judges learned and upright; pleaders
honest and modest, with some tincture of common sense, and Smithfield blazing with
pyramids of law books; the young nobility’s education entirely changed; the
physicians banished; the female Yahoos abounding in virtue, honour, truth, and
good sense; courts and levees of great ministers thoroughly weeded and swept;
wit, merit, and learning rewarded; all disgracers of the press in prose and
verse condemned to eat nothing but their own cotton, and quench their thirst
with their own ink. These, and a
thousand other reformations, I firmly counted upon by your encouragement; as
indeed they were plainly deducible from the precepts delivered in my book. And it must be owned, that seven months were
a sufficient time to correct every vice and folly to which Yahoos are subject,
if their natures had been capable of the least disposition to virtue or wisdom.
…”
Some
resonance of Pascal’s thoughts in Swift are unavoidable when revising
GULLIVER’s comprehension of reason-passions relationship. However, it has been
difficult to find a direct link between both writers. See: Pons, Emile “Swift
and Pascal” Les langues
modernes 45 (1951): 135-52. Cited by
Damrosch, Leo: in Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World. Yale University
Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=Xcw_AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA499&lpg=PA499&dq=swift+jonathan+Blaise+Pascal&source=bl&ots=1Il63MFi94&sig=nEjw3PBZsc0CjQFBK1rqZh4nmYs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TVZ7U8CPI4SpyASLiYCACA&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=swift%20jonathan%20Blaise%20Pascal&f=true
“Emile Pons was unable to find definite echoes
of Pascal in Swift’s writings, and thought that occasional similarities of
thinking were due to both of them having read the same authors:…”
[178] From Cadenus and
Vanessa
http://www.gutenberGULLIVERorg/cache/epub/13621/pg13621.html
Love, why do
we one passion call, / When’tis a compound of them all? / Where hot and cold,
where sharp and sweet, / In all their equipages meet; / Where pleasures mixed
with pains appear, / Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear.
[179] IV -12 “ I must freely confess, that since my last
return, some corruptions of my Yahoo nature have revived in me by conversing
with a few of your species, and particularly those of my own family, by an
unavoidable necessity; else I should never have attempted so absurd a project
as that of reforming the Yahoo race in this kingdom: But I have now done with
all such visionary schemes for ever.”
[180] ON THE TRINITY. http://www.gutenberGULLIVERorg/cache/epub/12746/pg12746.html
“First: It
would be well, if people would not lay so much weight on their own reason in
matters of religion, as to think everything impossible and absurd which they
cannot conceive. How often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the
whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of
every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his
interests, his passions, and his vices. Let any man but consider, when he
hath a controversy with another, although his cause be ever so unjust, although
the world be against him, how blinded he is by the love of himself, to believe
that right is wrong, and wrong is right, when it maketh for his own advantage.
Where is then the right use of his reason, which he so much boasts of, and
which he would blasphemously set up to control the commands of the Almighty?”
(The underlined text is our emphasis)
[181] Reilly, Patrick
Jonathan Swift: the brave desponder. Manchester University Press.
“But there
can be no question of Gullliver’s relevance to Swift in what a modern reader
might consider his others role as hero – not ethical hero, preferring hazardous
liberty to the degrading comfort of
Brobdingnag, not the champion of human dignity
against the behaviourist psychologists and genetic engineers who will programme
him for happiness, but hero of truth, scientific hero, always looking, always
seeking, intrepidly intent on finding out, whatever the cost. That Swift had
this in mind in creating Gulliver is indisputable; the only doubt is in determining
the degree to which he underwrote this notion of the hero as truth-seeker,
upheld it as unreservedly exemplary.” P. 160