The totalitarian streak in the Houyhnhnm society becomes clearer and clearer.
One aspect of the "natural" society of the Houyhnhnm is apparently racial stratification: "He made me observe that, among the Houyhnhnms, the white, the sorrel, and the iron-grey, were not so exactly shaped as the bay, the dapple-grey, and the black; nor born with equal talents of the mind, or a capacity to improve them; and therefore continued always in the condition of servants, without ever aspiring to match out of their own race, which in that country would be reckoned monstrous and unnatural."
From his dialogue with the master horse, Gulliver comes to see the superiority of the "rational" -- and unlettered -- Houyhnhnm, with their "general disposition to all virtues" compared with his own debased race and society.
Clearly said virtues do not include liberty: the Houyhnhnm practice birth control (through the social regulation of copulation) and also eugenics in the form of careful breeding so as "to preserve the race from degenerating." There is no romance: marriages are arranged. Nor is there love or pride of parents for their offspring, as the colts and foals are brought up collectively with the young distributed as necessary to maintain social equity.
The master horse reports to Gulliver on a debate at the Houyhnhnm grand council on whether to forceably annihilate the troublesome and inferior Yahoo population that has "infested" the nation. Finding that an extreme measure, the master horse himself counterproposes that the Houyhnhnm adopt a practice Gulliver described to him and simply castrate the Yahoo males.
At the grand council, it is further revealed that the first Yahoo came to Houyhnhnm after a shipwreck -- from their physiognomies, Gulliver believes they may be of English descent -- and propagated without control from then.
Yahoos are scapegoats for all ills of Houyhnhnm society. "The Houyhnhnm have no word in their language to express anything that is evil, except what they borrow from the deformaties and ill qualities of the Yahoos. Thus they denote the folly of a servant, an omission of a child, a stone that cuts their feet, a continuance of foul or unseasonable weather, and the like, by adding to each the epithet of Yahoo."
Gulliver describes his great contentment in the pre-modern Houyhnhnm society. In a first hint of collaborationism, his list of household arrangements mentions without note that the replacement leather for his shoes comes from Yahoo skin.
Gulliver becomes an assimilationist. He looks with horror on his reflection when he sees it in a pond and begins imitating the gait, gesture, and diction of his noble hosts.
The master horse reluctantly discloses to Gulliver that at the same great council at which the eradication of the Yahoos was discussed, it was "exhorted" that Gulliver should be expelled from the country.
Despondently, Gulliver begins building a canoe from the scrubby wood available in that land, "covering it with the skins of Yahoos" with a sail "composed of the skins of the same animals" sealed with pitch from "Yahoo's tallow" and, when completed, hauled down to the sea by Yahoo labor.
The grateful Gulliver bids farewell to his benevolent master: "as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honor to raise it gently to my mouth. I am not ignorant how much I have been censured for mentioning this last particular."
When Gulliver is discovered by others of his kind, Portuguese sailors, he is horrified to hear such "Yahoos" speak ("as monstrous as if a cow or dog would speak in England"). For their part, they laugh at the neighing pronounciation Gulliver has adopted.
Returning to England, Gulliver is repelled by his Yahoo wife and children ("the sight of them filled me with hatred, disgust, and contempt"), prefering the company of two young stone horses with whom he converses at least four hours each day.
Writing from a distance of several years from exile in England from his beloved Houyhnhnm, Gulliver is still not reconciled to Yahoo-kind, though he can now countenance all the vile sins he sees around him with one exception -- human pride.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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