Gulliver's Travels (Swift)/Part 4/Chapter 9
from the Collection âGulliver's Travels. Part 4â
The division of this summary into sections is editorial.
About three months before Gulliver left the land of the Houyhnhnms, an assembly met to discuss the Yahoos, the humanlike creatures kept there for labour. Gulliver later learned what had passed from his master.
The assembly debates the Yahoos
The assembly returned to its long-standing question: whether the Yahoos should be exterminated. One member argued that they were filthy, malicious and difficult to teach. Unless watched, they stole milk from cows, killed cats and damaged crops.
He recalled a tradition that two Yahoos had appeared on a mountain ages before and multiplied until they overran the country. The Houyhnhnms had hunted them, killed the adults and raised the young for draught and carriage. He argued that they could not have been native, since other animals hated them so intensely. He recommended breeding donkeys instead: they were clean, manageable and strong, though less agile.
Gulliverâs master agreed that the first Yahoos had come from elsewhere. He believed they had arrived by sea, been abandoned and become increasingly savage. As evidence, he described Gulliver, who had learned the Houyhnhnm language and told him of countries where humans ruled and horses served them. Beneath his clothes, Gulliver resembled a Yahoo, though he was whiter, less hairy and had shorter claws.
The master considered Gulliver a Yahoo with a small measure of reason, still far inferior to a Houyhnhnmâs. From Gulliverâs account of castrating young horses to make them manageable, he had borrowed a proposal: castrate the young Yahoos, making them more useful while allowing their race to die out without killing them. Meanwhile, the Houyhnhnms could breed donkeys, which were ready to work at five rather than twelve.
The master withheld one matter concerning Gulliver personally. Gulliver would soon suffer its consequences and traced his later misfortunes to it.
Learning, poetry and practical skills
Gulliver explained that the Houyhnhnms had no writing, so knowledge passed through tradition. They had little history to remember, he thought, because they lived harmoniously and had no dealings with other nations. Though free from disease and without physicians, they used herbal medicines for injuries.
They calculated the year by the sun and moon, understood eclipses and did not divide time into weeks. Gulliver admired their poetry for its precise descriptions and comparisons, and for its celebrations of friendship, generosity and athletic victories.
Their simple buildings protected them from heat and cold. Without iron, they sharpened wooden stakes with stone and wove straw or twigs between them. They used a hollow above the hoof of each forefoot much as humans used hands: Gulliver had even seen a white mare thread a needle. Flint tools served for cutting and harvesting; Yahoos carried the sheaves home, and servants separated the grain for storage. The Houyhnhnms also made wooden and sun-dried earthen vessels.
Death without mourning
The Houyhnhnms generally lived to seventy or seventy-five, and, barring accidents, died of old age. They buried their dead in inconspicuous places and showed neither grief nor regret. Gulliver recalled that a visitor arrived late with her children because her husband had died that morning. She explained her delay in arranging his burial, then behaved as cheerfully as the others; she herself died three months later.
During the gradual, painless decline preceding death, friends visited those who could no longer travel easily. About ten days before dying, the Houyhnhnms usually returned nearby visits in a Yahoo-drawn sledge. Gulliver described their farewells:
they take a solemn leave of their friends, as if they were going to some remote part of the country, where they designed to pass the rest of their lives.
The language of faults
Gulliver observed that the Houyhnhnms had no independent word for evil. They described faults by associating them with Yahoos, adding the name to expressions for a servantâs folly, a childâs mistake, bad weather or a badly built house.
He intended to write a separate volume about Houyhnhnm manners and virtues. For now, he turned to the unhappy outcome of his own stay.