Essay, Research Paper: Swift's Theory Of Humanity

Swift's Theory of Humanity
Jonathan Swift used part IV of Gulliver's Travels to present his theory that reason is the essence of mankind. To present his theory, Swift places humans (Yahoos) and horses (Houyhnhnms) on a secluded island. The humans forfeited the ability to use reason, and the horses received the ability to use reason. Swift will use the horses to show how reason can change a simple animal into a complex, almost human species. He will use the humans to show how lack of reason can turn a complex species into a simple and irrational species.
There is very little known about the private life of Jonathan Swift. He was born in the city of Dublin, Ireland on November 30, 1667. His father had died while his mother was pregnant with Jonathan. Right after the young Swift was born, his mother left him with his uncle to care for him. Jonathan was not a great student, but he went to Trinity Collage and graduated as a favor to his Uncle. Before Swift completed his masters degree, he left to join the Glorious Revolution. (Barron's)
Swift's first experience in politics was in the Glorious Revolution of England. The object of the revolution was to force James II to relinquish the throne. James had worked to increase the power of the Roman Catholic Church in England. This had terrible effects on the Anglican Church. The methods in which James ruled were discriminatory against Anglicans. James fled to France, when William of Orange arrived with an army. After James had fled, Jonathan Swift became secretary to the prominent Whig, Sir William Temple. Because Swift believed that Roman Catholics had no part in English government and the Whigs objected to this idea, Swift changed parties and became a Tory. He would remain a Tory for the rest of his life. (Barron's)
The main character of Gulliver's Travels is Lemur Gulliver. Gulliver makes four voyages and in each voyage he either is shipwrecked, abandoned, or banished from his ship. On the last journey, Gulliver took an adventurous offer as commissioned captain of a merchant ship bound for the western side of South America. The crew suffers fierce storms and many of the sailors perished, and the sailors take over the ship through a mutiny. The sailors were quick to get rid of the captain and at the first island they sail past, they abandoned Gulliver. On the Island, Gulliver is attacked by the unknown and strange beasts called Yahoos, but the beasts are quickly frightened away by two horses. The horses seemed to converse with each other is a language that was unknown to Gulliver. The two horses take Gulliver to a wood dwelling. Inside he meets a horse whom Gulliver perceives as the leader and the leader allowed him to stay at the dwelling. He spends the rest of his three years stay on the island learning the language and describing the human civilization and culture to the Houyhnhnms. These educated horses call themselves Houyhnhnms and they call the beasts that attacked Gulliver, Yahoos. Through these talks Gulliver is edified by the Houyhnhnms' superior rationality. He deduces from one of these talks that two Yahoos had appeared on the island many years before Gulliver. Through succeeding generations these "humans" lost the ability to use reason. Gulliver is able to do infer that these beasts show many similarities to humans. Gulliver is made to leave the island, because he is so similar to the Yahoos.
…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 labor. (Swift 508-509)

In part IV of Gulliver's Travels, Swift created an island inhabited by two contrasting species. The more advanced and rational Houyhnhnms, are horses whose actions reason governs. The Houyhnhnms have a language, a simple government, and basic building skills. They can only act right, because they can not act wrong. They do not lie, cheat, steal, or fight. They do not possess feelings such as love, hate, or jealously. The Houyhnhnms do not have a religion or a belief in a higher being. They live in a utopian culture, because their rational behavior makes the culture perfect.
They share the island with the human-like Yahoos. The Yahoos are the descendants of two rational humans who appeared many years before Gulliver arrived on the island. The separation from the civilized world caused the descendants to lose their rational nature. Without the ability to act or think rationally the Yahoos became very violent. Swift will use the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms to prove his theory that reason is the essence of man.
The Yahoo is a representation of how lack of reason turns man into a slave to his appetites and passions. The Yahoos have violent tendencies and will attack others of their species. They covet material objects, especially large rocks. They are very greedy over these rocks and will attack other Yahoos to get the rocks from them. This is like how humans can sometimes act when they are after money and power. The rock's have little usefulness, but their value is solely that which is put on them, because humans or Yahoos place it on them. Civilized man is like the Yahoos because we often go to war over material things and power.
The Houyhnhnms are the perfect species because their lives are fully rational. They act right because they cannot do wrong. They do not lie, cheat, or steal. They live in a perfect society where there is no war. There is no crime or violence. They share everything and do not believe in owning a material object. The wisest is the leader and there are no struggles over who is going to have power.
There is a moral resemblance between humans and Yahoos. They both covet objects. The Yahoos collect huge rocks and humans covet material things such as money and power. The Yahoos have violent tendencies like man. There is no inherent value in the rocks or any use for them. The process of collecting these rocks is described by Jonathan Swift as follows:
That in some fields of his country there are certain shining stones of several colors, whereof the Yahoos are violently fond, and when part of these stones is fixed in the earth, as it sometimes happens, they will dig with their claws for whole days to get them out, then carry them away, and hide them by heaps in their kennels; but still looking round with great caution, for fear their comrades should find out their treasure. (Swift 486)

When one Yahoo is threatening another Yahoo then there is a fight between the two. This resembles humans, because we lash out at others when we feel threatened.
According to Swift the Yahoos represent what man can become if he does not exercise the reason he has. Man will naturally find a highly valuable material to lust after. Gold, silver, diamonds, and precious metals are extremely valuable materials that mankind desire. For the Yahoos, they crave large stones. It is interesting that all these things are mined from the ground. In pursuing it's desired "stones," man will show extremely violent tendencies like the Yahoos. The ability to reason and the use of reason are what keeps rational man from being constantly violent like the Yahoos, who have lost their ability to use reason.
Civilized man can appear to be worse than the Yahoo. Man does not use his reason for good, but is known to make weapons of war that can kill hundreds. Man is not fully rational, so humans do not always act rationally. The Houyhnhnms are the only truly rational beings. They live in a peaceful society, unlike humans. Humans have not made their lives better through the ability to reason, but have only intensified their destructive and wicked tendencies. The separation of the Yahoos from human society is what led to their descent into savages. The Yahoos do not absorb reason from the world like civilized man. Without reason they turned into a species with a human body and human desires and cravings, but without any ability to control such desires. The human that fails to heed the restraint of reason has a closer resemblance to irrational Yahoos than to the rational Houyhnhnms. The Yahoo has the same desires and cravings as such men. It also has the same body and features as humans. The Houyhnhnms do not look like humans. They do not have desires or cravings. This is why Houyhnhnms are less like man than Yahoos.
According to one view, Swift wrote Act IV of Gulliver's Travels to address three hypotheses. That the Yahoos represent mankind without the ability to rationalize. That the Houyhnhnms represent how reason can change a simple animal into a complex almost human species. That mankind is more, equal, or less violent than the Yahoos, because of it's ability to use reason.
John Locke wrote:
"…all reasonings concerning cause and effect, are founded on experience, and that all reasonings from experience are founded on the supposition, that the course of nature will continue uniformly the same."
This quotation translated states that reason is the thought process that is not dependent on instinct. Rather it is forming opinions or ideas by using logic. This is know as Descarte's reasoning, where "reason is the logical deduction from explicit premises." An example of reason would be a hypothesis, or an educated guess made from the known facts, to explain an unknown. Reason is a gift that can be employed for both good and bad purposes. Reason is only good when it contributes to the common good of society. The common good is reason's intended use, but is often used for evil and bad uses. (Hume 130)
The Yahoos are Swifts answer to the infatuation of some of his contemporaries' with noble "natural" men. The language used to describe the Yahoos was vulgar and anatomical to indicate the repulsiveness of "unspoiled" nature. Here is an example of how Swift described the female Yahoos:
The females were not so large as the males; they had long lank hair on their heads, but none on their faces, nor anything more than a sort of down on the rest of their bodies, except about the anus, and pudenda. Their dugs hung between their forefeet, and often reached almost to the ground as they walked. The hair of both sexes was of several colors, brown, red, black, and yellow. Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, nor one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy. (Swift 444)

The Yahoos represent man as hopelessly irrational, decadent, and depraved. Gulliver exemplified this when he proved man's violent tendencies by making gunpowder an example of an achievement of man.
Hobbes wrote that man's state of nature as "nasty, brutish, and short." The Yahoos were the exemplification of all three of these factors. Human actions and features are irrelevant because even a parrot could learn to speak certain words. A dolphin could mimic human actions or a baby chimp could look like a human baby. The only determining factor on whether an animal is human like or not is if reason controls the actions of that animal. (Hobbes 34)
In Swift's time their were two versions of the nature of man.
consider man chiefly as born for action; and as influenced… by taste by taste and sentiment; pursuing one object, and avoiding another, according to the value which these objects seem to possess, and according to the light in which they present themselves…. The other species of philosophers consider man in the light of a reasonable rather than an active being…"(Hume 1)
Swift takes these views and makes them into characters. The first, in the form of the Yahoos and the other as in the form of the Houyhnhnms. This shows how absurd these theories are if they are pushed to their logical extremes. If man is governed by his passions or feelings he acts as the Yahoos. This quotation from Gulliver's Travels, shows an example of Yahoo behavior.
"…there was nothing that rendered the Yahoos more odious than their undistinguishing appetite to devour every thing that came in their way, whether herbs, roots, berries, the corrupted flesh of animals, or all mingled together; and it was peculiar in their temper that they were fonder of what they could get by rapine or stealth at a greater distance than much better food provided for them at home. If their prey held out, they would eat till they were ready to burst, after which nature had pointed out to them a
certain root that gave them a general evacuation. (Swift 487-488)
Can humans really act and live like Houyhnhnms? The answer to this question is no. Humans are a very complex creature and horses are not. The Houyhnhnms show many of the same traits as wild horses. The wild horse does not show compassion and does not have close bonds with other horses. The Houyhnhnms have friendship but it is a very cold friendship, and they are not capable of having close friendships like horses. The horses do not get passionately involved in their young, so any Houyhnhnm can serve as parent to any Houyhnhnm child. Humans have very passionate friendships and are capable of showing compassion towards their person of their choosing. The bond between parent in child of the human species is very strong. The human family can be deeply saddened by the loss one of their family. Being fully reasonable would not lessen or increase these feelings.
Swift satirizes the extremes both of reason and of emotion as governing focus in mans nature. What then is man? He is both reason and emotion. Possibly Swift would agree with Alexander Pope about man:
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
… … …
In doubt his Mind and Body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
… … …
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl'd;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! (Pope 170)

Reason created the Houyhnhnm race from average horses. Lack of that reason turned Humans into animals controlled only by emotions.