"Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World: Part 4, A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms"
Gulliver's ship taken over by mutineers and he is set adrift near an unknown island, likely near Madagascar. He has with him the kinds of trading goods one employs in dealing with "savages" -- knives, bracelets of false pearl, small mirrors, and beads.
He encounters the Yahoos and is disgusted by their physical appearance, even as his description makes it apparent they are humanoid.
He next finds the Houyhnhnms, civilized horses, who are astounded to be confronted by a Yahoo with clothing -- "whereof they had no conception" -- and the faculty of speech.
The Yahoos are meat eaters; the Houyhnhnms vegetarians. Of necessity, Gulliver adopts a vegetarian, salt-free diet and "cannot but observe, that I never had one hour's sickness while I stayed in this island."
A dinner guest arrives at the home of the "master horse" in a sleigh drawn by four Yahoos.
Upon closer inspection, Gulliver realizes Yahoos are "savage" humans, but he refuses to see them as of his kind.
Gulliver avoids being seen without clothes in order to "distinguish myself as much as possible from the cursed race of Yahoos."
He relates that "the word Houyhnhnm in their tongue signifies a horse, and in its eytmology, the perfection of nature." In keeping with that perfection, the Houyhnhnm have no shame of "any parts of their bodies" and their language has no word for lying or, thus, for doubt or disbelief.
Gulliver describes to the master horse the life of servitude of his kind in England -- and of methods of training including bridles, saddles, whips, and spurs and the castrating of working horses to make them more docile -- drawing similar outrage as to when he told the Brobdingnag King about European munitions.
As Gulliver describes the variety of human behavior to the master horse -- lawsuits, drunkenness, whoring, gaming, sodomy, treason, murder, theft, poisoning, coining false money, rape, etc. etc. -- he needs to stop to explain every one of those vices as none exist among the Houyhnhnm. "This labor took up several days conversation before he was able to comprehend me."
Gulliver then embarks on an encyclopedic yet matter-of-fact enumeration of all the reasons why the princes of his own land go to war and a brief overview of the carnage of battle. To which the master horse responds that "whoever understood the nature of Yahoos might easily believe it possible for so vile an animal to be capable of every action I had named, if their strength and cunning equalled their malice."
Then, Gulliver describes the profession of law, again unknown to the Houyhnhnm: "I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are slaves."
The use of money, the extremes of Yahoo wealth and poverty, and global trade are expoused. England, Gulliver explains, exports the food that could easily feed its masses: "sending away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, from whence in return we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spread among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, foreswearing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, freethinking, and the like occupations; every one of which terms, I was at much pains to make him understand."
Gulliver then describes the diseases caused by the Yahoo's tendencies toward excess and then the medical profession with its love of purgatives and emetics. He further relates: "Besides real diseases we are subject to many that are only imaginary, for which physicians have invented imaginary cures."
The master horse contemplates the odiousness of the human form compared to other creatures and concludes it not unwise that those of Gulliver's homeland choose to cover their bodies "and by that invention conceal many of our own deformaties from each other."
Gulliver takes trips to observe the Yahoos in the wild and more and more sees the similarities in his species behavior in its natural state with that of civilized Europe. These field trips culminate in his nearly being raped by an 11 year old Yahoo girl when he his nakedness is revealed while swimming in a pond.
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