Gulliver's Travels (Swift)/Part 4/Chapter 12
from the Collection âGulliver's Travels. Part 4â
The division of this summary into sections is editorial.
At the end of his account, the traveller Lemuel Gulliver addressed his readers and defended the truth of his voyages, which had lasted more than sixteen years and seven months.
A travellerâs duty to tell the truth
Gulliver said he had chosen plain facts over improbable wonders because he wanted to inform rather than entertain. Travellers, he argued, should make readers wiser through both good and bad foreign examples. He wished authors of travel books had to swear that their accounts were true: his own journeys had exposed many stories he had enjoyed in youth as false.
Encouraged by acquaintances to publish, he had resolved to tell the truth, guided by the example of his former master and the other Houyhnhnms, the rational horse-like beings among whom he had lived. He accepted that later travellers might correct and displace him, but claimed to seek public benefit, not fame. Gulliver hoped readers would compare their own vices with Houyhnhnm virtue and learn from the moral and political wisdom of the Brobdingnagians.
Insisting that he had avoided party disputes, prejudice and offence, Gulliver declared himself beyond legitimate criticism. His long acquaintance with the Houyhnhnms, he claimed, gave him an advantage in instructing mankind.
The case against conquest
Gulliver answered a suggestion that, as an English subject, he should have reported his discoveries to a secretary of state so the Crown could claim them. He doubted that conquering these lands would be worthwhile or safe: the tiny Lilliputians were scarcely worth the expense, the giant Brobdingnagians were formidable, and an army would be vulnerable beneath the Flying Island.
Although the Houyhnhnms knew nothing of warfare, Gulliver believed their courage, unity and powerful hind legs would make them dangerous opponents. Rather than invade them, he wished they could teach Europe honour, justice, truth and other virtues.
He also questioned the justice of colonial claims. He described a crew landing among hospitable people, naming their country for a king, killing inhabitants and carrying others away. Further expeditions then seized land and gold while presenting violence as a mission to convert and civilize. Gulliver followed this account with lavish praise of British colonial officials and their supposed justice and virtue.
The countries he had visited, he observed, neither wanted conquest nor offered the gold or profitable crops that might attract colonists. He was nevertheless willing to testify that, according to their inhabitants, no European had visited before him, though two ancient Yahoos in Houyhnhnm-land might complicate the claim. He had never thought of formally taking possession for his sovereign; had he done so, prudence might have made him postpone it.
Life among the Yahoos at Redriff
Taking leave of his readers, Gulliver intended to return to reflection in his little garden at Redriff and practise the lessons of the Houyhnhnms. He would try to instruct his family, whom he called Yahoos after the human-like creatures he had encountered, and look often in a mirror to become accustomed to a human face. He also resolved to treat English horses respectfully, despite regretting their lack of Houyhnhnm reason.
The previous week he had begun allowing his wife to dine at the far end of a long table and answer his questions briefly. Human smell still offended him, so he stopped his nose with herbs or tobacco. He hoped eventually to endure a neighbourâs company without fearing the personâs teeth or claws.
A final warning against pride
Gulliver thought he might reconcile himself to humanity if people were content with their ordinary vices. Pride, however, made him lose patience: he could not understand how a creature so flawed in body and mind could be proud. The Houyhnhnms, he said, had no word for that vice and no reason to boast of qualities that were natural to them.
Hoping to make the company of English people more bearable, Gulliver ended by asking the proud to stay away from him:
I here entreat those who have any tincture of this absurd vice, that they will not presume to come in my sight.