Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/526

490 like him too, often walks erect upon two legs, with a staff in his hand, sits down upon chairs, and has the same deportment in many other points.

But while they so squeamishly take offence at this nonentity, this chimera of the brain, does it never occur to them that there really exist thousands and ten thousands of their own species, in different parts of this peopled earth, infinitely more detestable than the Yahoos. In whatever odious light their form has been portrayed, can it excite higher disgust than that of the Hottentot, decorated with guts, which are used for food when in a state of putrefaction; and who loads his head with a mixture of stinking grease and soot, to make a secure lodgement for swarms of the most filthy vermin? or than those savages, who slash, mangle, and deform, with a variety of horrid figures, the human face divine, in order to strike a greater terrour into their enemies? Are there any actions attributed to the miserable Yahoo so diabolical as are constantly practised in some of these savage nations, by exposing their children, murdering their parents in their old age, and roasting and eating their captives taken in war, with many other abominations? In all which instances we see, that human reason, in its state of depravity, is productive of infinitely worse consequences, than can proceed from a total deprivation of it. This lesson Gulliver has taken care to inculcate, where his master Houyhnhnm, after having received an account from him of the manners and customs of the Europeans, makes the following observation: "That although he hated the Yahoos of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities, than he did a gnnayh " (a bird