Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/516

480 the other, with that of a horse. Between these two he divides the qualities of the human mind, taking away the rational soul from the Yahoo, and transferring it to the Houyhnhnm. To the Yahoo he leaves all the passions and evil propensities of man's nature, to be exerted without any check or control, as in the case of all other animals. The rational soul in the Houyhnhnm, acts unerringly as by instinct; it intuitively perceives what is right, and necessarily acts up to the dictates of reason. The Yahoo, as here described, is a creature of fancy, the product of the author's brain, which never had any thing similar to it upon earth. It has no resemblance to man, but in the make of its body, and the vicious propensities of its nature. It differs from him wholly in all the characteristical marks which distinguish man from the rest of the animal world. It has not a ray of reason, it has no speech, and it goes, like other quadrupeds, upon all four. Now, as reason, speech, and walking upright on two legs, are the universal properties of the human race, even in the most savage nations, which peculiarly mark their superiority over brutes, how, in the name of Heaven, has it come to pass, that by almost all who have read Gulliver, the Yahoos have been considered as beings of the human species, and the odious picture drawn of them, as intended to vilify and debase our nature? But it is evident from the whole account given of this creature of his fancy, that the author intended it should be considered as a mere beast, of a new species; for he has not only deprived it of all the characteristical distinctions of man before recited, but has superadded some rial