Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 6.djvu/383

Rh want of thoroughly understanding human nature, as it shows itself in other countries, where that animal presides. But I, who had more experience, could plainly observe some rudiments of it among the wild yahoos.

But the Houyhnhnms, who live under the government of reason, are no more proud of the good qualities they possess, than I should be for not wanting a leg or an arm; which no man in his wits would boast of, although he must be miserable without them. I dwell the longer upon this subject, from the desire I have to make the society of an English yahoo, by any means not insupportable; and therefore I here entreat those, who have any tincture of this absurd vice, that they will not presume to come in my sight.

$$$$$$ To mortify pride, which indeed was not made for man, and produces not only the most ridiculous follies, but the most extensive calamity, appears to have been one general view of the author in every part of these travels. Personal strength and beauty, the wisdom and the virtue of mankind, become objects not of pride but of humility, in the diminutive stature and contemptible weakness of the Lilliputians; in the horrid deformity of the Brobdingnagians, in the learned folly of the Laputians, and in the parallel drawn between our manners, and those of the Houyhnhnms.