and settled among them, what suspected Persons shall be accused of a
Plot: Then, effectual Care is taken to secure all their Letters and
Papers, and put the Owners in Chains. These papers are delivered
to a Sett of Artists, very dexterous in finding out the
mysterious Meanings of Words, Syllables, and Letters...Where this
method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the Learned
among them call ACROSTICS and ANAGRAMS. FIRST, they can decypher all
initial Letters into political Meanings: Thus: N shall signify a Plot, B
a Regiment of Horse, L a Fleet at Sea: Or, SECONDLY, by transposing the
Letters of the Alphabet in any suspected Paper, they can lay open the
deepest Designs of a discontented Party. So, for Example if I should say
in a Letter to a Friend, OUR BROTHER TOM HAS JUST GOT THE PILES, a
skilful Decypherer would discover that the same Letters, which compose
that Sentence, may be analysed in the following Words: RESIST--A PLOT IS
BROUGHT HOME--THE TOUR (Note: tower). And this is the anagrammatic method.
Other professors at the same school invent simplified languages, write
books by machinery, educate their pupils by inscribing the lesson on a
wafer and causing them to swallow it, or propose to abolish individuality
altogether by cutting off part of the brain of one man and grafting it on
to the head of another. There is something queerly familiar in the
atmosphere of these chapters, because, mixed up with much fooling, there
is a perception that one of the aims of totalitarianism is not merely to
make sure that people will think the right thoughts, but actually to make
them LESS CONSCIOUS. Then, again, Swift's account of the Leader who is
usually to be found ruling over a tribe of Yahoos, and of the "favourite"
who acts first as a dirty-worker and later as a scapegoat, fits
remarkably well into the pattern of our own times. But are we to infer
from all this that Swift was first and foremost an enemy of tyranny and a
champion of the free intelligence? No: his own views, so far as one can
discern them, are not markedly liberal. No doubt he hates lords, kings,
bishops, generals, ladies of fashion, orders, titles and flummery
generally, but he does not seem to o think better of the common people
than of their rulers, or to be in favour of increased social equality, or
to be enthusiastic about representative institutions. The Houyhnhnms are
organized upon a sort of caste system which is racial in character, the
horses which do the menial work being of different colours from their
masters and not interbreeding with them. The educational system which
Swift admires in the Lilliputians takes hereditary class distinctions for
granted, and the children of the poorest classes do not go to school,
because "their Business being only to till and cultivate the Earth...
therefore their Education is of little Consequence to the Public". Nor
does he seem to have been strongly in favour of freedom of speech and the
Press, in spite of the toleration which his own writings enjoyed. The
King of Brobdingnag is astonished at the multiplicity of religious and
political sects in England, and considers that those who hold "opinions
prejudicial to the public" (in the context this seems to mean simply
heretical opinions), though they need not be obliged to change them,
ought to be obliged to conceal them: for "as it was Tyranny in any
Government to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the
second". There is a subtler indication of Swift's own attitude in the
manner in which Gulliver leaves the land of the Houyhnhnms.
Intermittently, at least. Swift was a kind of anarchist, and Part IV of
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS is a picture of an anarchistic Society, not governed
by law in the ordinary sense, but by the dictates of "Reason", which arc
voluntarily accepted by everyone. The General Assembly of the Houyhnhnms
"exhorts" Gulliver's master to get rid of him, and his neighbours put
pressure on him to make him comply. Two reasons are given. One is that
the presence of this unusual Yahoo may unsettle the rest of the tribe,
and the other is that a friendly relationship between a Houyhnhnm and a
Yahoo is "not agreeable to Reason or Nature, or a Thing ever heard of
before among them". Gulliver's master is somewhat unwilling to obey, but
the "exhortation" (a Houyhnhnm, we are told, is never COMPELLED to do
anything, he is merely "exhorted" or "advised") cannot be disregarded.
This illustrates very well the totalitarian tendency which is explicit in
the anarchist or pacifist vision of Society. In a Society in which there
is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is
public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to
conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of
law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual
can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly
governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make
him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else. The
Houyhnhnms, we are told, were unanimous on almost all subjects. The only
question they ever DISCUSSED was how to deal with the Yahoos. Otherwise
there was no room for disagreement among them, because the truth is
always either self-evident, or else it is undiscoverable and
unimportant. They had apparently no word for "opinion" in their language,
and in their conversations there was no "difference of sentiments". They
had reached, in fact, the highest stage of totalitarian organization, the
stage when conformity has become so general that there is no need for a
police force. Swift approves of this kind of thing because among his many
gifts neither curiosity nor good-nature was included. Disagreement would
always seem to him sheer perversity. "Reason," among the Houyhnhnms, he
says, "is not a Point Problematical, as with us, where men can argue with
Plausibility on both Sides of a Question; but strikes you with immediate
Conviction; as it must needs do, where it is not mingled, obscured, or
discoloured by Passion and Interest." In other words, we know everything
already, so why should dissident opinions be tolerated? The totalitarian
Society of the Houyhnhnms, where there can be no freedom and no
development, follows naturally from this.
We are right to think of Swift as a rebel and iconoclast, but except in
certain secondary matters, such as his insistence that women should
receive the same education as men, he cannot be labelled "Left". He is a
Tory anarchist, despising authority while disbelieving in liberty, and
preserving the aristocratic outlook while seeing clearly that the
existing aristocracy is degenerate and contemptible. When Swift utters
one of his characteristic diatribes against the rich and powerful, one
must probably, as I said earlier, write off something for the fact that
he himself belonged to the less successful party, and was personally
disappointed. The "outs", for obvious reasons, are always more radical
than the "ins". [Note, below] But the most essential t
hing in Swift is his
inability to believe that life--ordinary life on the solid earth, and not
some rationalized, deodorized version of it--could be made worth living. Of
course, no honest person claims that happiness is NOW a normal condition
among adult human beings; but perhaps it COULD be made normal, and it is
upon this question that all serious political controversy really turns.
Swift has much in common--more, I believe, than has been noticed--with
Tolstoy, another disbeliever in the possibility of happiness. In both men
you have the same anarchistic outlook covering an authoritarian cast of
mind; in both a similar hostility to Science, the same impatience with
opponents, the same inability to see the importance of any question not
interesting to themselves; and in both cases a sort of horror of the
actual process of life, though in Tolstoy's case it was arrived at later
and in a different way. The sexual unhappiness of the two men was not of
the same kind, but there was this in common, that in both of them a
sincere loathing was mixed up with a morbid fascination. Tolstoy was a
reformed rake who ended by preaching complete celibacy, while continuing
to practise the opposite into extreme old age. Swift was presumably
impotent, and had an exaggerated horror of human dung: he also thought
about it incessantly, as is evident throughout his works. Such people are
not likely to enjoy even the small amount of happiness that falls to most
human beings, and, from obvious motives, are not likely to admit that
earthly life is capable of much improvement. Their incuriosity, and hence
their intolerance, spring from the same root.
[Note: At the end of the book, as typical specimens of human
folly and viciousness, Swift names "a Lawyer, a Pickpocket,
a Colonel, a Fool, a Lord, a Gamester, a Politician, a Whore-master,
a Physician, an Evidence, a Suborner, an Attorney, a Traitor, or the
like". One sees here the irresponsible violence of the powerless.
The list lumps together those who break the conventional code, and those
who keep it. For instance, if you automatically condemn a colonel, as
such, on what grounds do you condemn a traitor? Or again, if you want to
suppress pickpockets, you must have laws, which means that you must have
lawyers. But the whole closing passage, in which the hatred is so
authentic, and the reason given for it so inadequate, is somehow
unconvincing. One has the feeling that personal animosity is at work.
(Author's footnote.)]
Swift's disgust, rancour and pessimism would make sense against the
background of a "next world" to which this one is the prelude. As he
does not appear to believe seriously in any such thing, it becomes
necessary to construct a paradise supposedly existing on the surface of
the earth, but something quite different from anything we know, with all
that he disapproves of--lies, folly, change, enthusiasm, pleasure, love
and dirt--eliminated from it. As his ideal being he chooses the horse,
an animal whose excrement is not offensive. The Houyhnhnms are dreary
beasts--this is so generally admitted that the point is not worth
labouring. Swift's genius can make them credible, but there can have
been very few readers in whom they have excited any feeling beyond
dislike. And this is not from wounded vanity at seeing animals preferred
to men; for, of the two, the Houyhnhnms are much liker to human beings
than are the Yahoos, and Gulliver's horror of the Yahoos, together with
his recognition that they are the same kind of creature as himself,
contains a logical absurdity. This horror comes upon him at his very
first sight of them. "I never beheld," he says, "in all my Travels, so
disagreeable an Animal, nor one against which I naturally conceived so
strong an Antipathy." But in comparison with what are the Yahoos
disgusting? Not with the Houyhnhnms, because at this time Gulliver has
not seen a Houyhnhnm. It can only be in comparison with himself, i.e.
with a human being. Later, however, we are to be told that the Yahoos
ARE human beings, and human society becomes insupportable to Gulliver
because all men are Yahoos. In that case why did he not conceive his
disgust of humanity earlier? In effect we are told that the Yahoos are
fantastically different from men, and yet are the same. Swift has
over-reached himself in his fury, and is shouting at his
fellow-creatures, "You are filthier than you are!" However, it is
impossible to feel much sympathy with the Yahoos, and it is not because
they oppress the Yahoos that the Houyhnhnms are unattractive. They are
unattractive because the "Reason" by which they are governed is really a
desire for death. They are exempt from love, friendship, curiosity,
fear, sorrow and--except in their feelings towards the Yahoos, who
occupy rather the same place in their community as the Jews in Nazi
Germany--anger and hatred. "They have no Fondness for their Colts or
Foles, but the Care they take, in educating them, proceeds entirely from
the Dictates of REASON." They lay store by "Friendship" and
"Benevolence", but "these are not confined to particular Objects, but
universal to the whole Race". They also value conversation, but in their
conversations there are no differences of opinion, and "nothing passed
but what was useful, expressed in the fewest and most significant
Words". They practise strict birth control, each couple producing two
offspring and thereafter abstaining from sexual intercourse. Their
marriages are arranged for them by their elders, on eugenic principles,
and their language contains no word for "love", in the sexual sense.
When somebody dies they carry on exactly as before, without feeling any
grief. It will be seen that their aim is to be as like a corpse as is
possible while retaining physical life. One or two of their
characteristics, it is true, do not seem to be strictly "reasonable" in
their own usage of the word. Thus, they place a great value not only on
physical hardihood but on athleticism, and they are devoted to poetry.
But these exceptions may be less arbitrary than they seem. Swift
probably emphasizes the physical strength of the Houyhnhnms in order to
make clear that they could never be conquered by the hated human race,
while a taste for poetry may figure among their qualities because poetry
appeared to Swift as the antithesis of Science, from his point of view
the most useless of all pursuits. In Part III he names "Imagination,
Fancy, and Invention" as desirable faculties in which the Laputan
mathematicians (in spite of their love of music) were wholly lacking.
One must remember that although Swift was an admirable writer of comic
verse, the kind of poetry he thought valuable would probably be didactic
poetry. The poetry of the Houyhnhnms, he says:
must be allowed to excel (that of) all other Mortals; wherein the
Justness of their Similes, and the Minuteness, as well as exactness, of
their Descriptions, are, indeed, inimitable. Their Verses abound very
much in both of these; and usually contain either some exalted Notions of
Friendship and Benevolence, or the Praises of those who were Victors in
Races, and other bodily Exercises.
Alas, not even the genius of Swift was equal to producing a specimen by
which we could judge the poetry of the Houyhnhnms. But it sounds as
though it were chilly stuff (in heroic couplets, presumably), and not
seriously in conflict with the principles of "Reason".
Happiness is notoriously difficult to describe, and pictures of a just
and well-ordered Society are seldom either attractive or convincing. Most
creators of "favourable" Utopias, however, are concerned to show what
life could be like if it were lived more fully. Swift advocates a simple
refusal of life, justifying this by the claim that "Reason" consists in
thwarting your instincts. The Houyhnhnms, creatures without a history,
continue for generation after generation to live prudently, maintaining
their population at exactly the same level, avoiding all passion,
suffering from no diseases, meeting death indifferently, training up
their young in the same principles--and all for what? In order that the
same process may continue indefinitely. The notions that life here and
now is worth living, or that it could be made worth living, or that it
must be sacrificed for some future good, are all absent. The dreary world
of the Houyhnhnms was about as good a Utopia as Swift could construct,
granting that he neither believed in a "next world" nor could get any
pleasure out of certain normal activities. But it is not really set up
as something desirable in itself, but as the justification for another
attack on humanity. The aim, as usual, is to humiliate Man by reminding
him that he is weak and ridiculous, and above all that he stinks; and
the ultimate motive, probably, is a kind of envy, the envy of the ghost
for the living, of the man who knows he cannot be happy for the others
who--so he fears--may be a little happier than himself. The political
expression of such an outlook must be either reactionary or nihilistic,
because the person who holds it will want to prevent Society from
developing in some direction in which his pessimism may be cheated. One
can do this either by blowing everything to pieces, or by averting
social change. Swift ultimately blew everything to pieces in the only
way that was feasible before the atomic bomb--that is, he went mad--but,
as I have tried to show, his political aims were on the whole
reactionary ones.
From what I have written it may have seemed that I am AGAINST Swift, and
that my object is to refute him and even to belittle him. In a political
and moral sense I am against him, so far as I understand him. Yet
curiously enough he is one of the writers I admire with least reserve,
and GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, in particular, is a book which it seems
impossible for me to grow tired of. I read it first when I was,
eight--one day short of eight, to be exact, for I stole and furtively
read the copy which was to be given me next day on my eighth
birthday--and I have certainly not read it less than half a dozen times
since. Its fascination seems inexhaustible. If I had to make a list of
six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I
would certainly put GULLIVER'S TRAVELS among them. This raises the
question: what is the relationship between agreement with a writer's
opinions, and enjoyment of his work?
If one is capable of intellectual detachment, one can PERCEIVE merit in a
writer whom one deeply disagrees with, but ENJOYMENT is a different
matter. Supposing that there is such a thing as good or bad art, then the
goodness or badness must reside in the work of art itself--not
independently of the observer, indeed, but independently of the mood of
the observer. In one sense, therefore, it cannot be true that a poem is
good on Monday and bad on Tuesday. But if one judges the poem by the
appreciation it arouses, then it can certainly be true, because
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