Fifty Orwell Essays

by George Orwell

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