The Mirror of Human Nature — Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver pauses to explain why he has been so harsh on his own species. The Houyhnhnms' virtues opened his eyes; he learned to hate falsehood and resolved to sacrifice everything to truth. Within a year he loved his master enough to plan never to return to humankind, though he admits he softened England's faults where he could before so strict an examiner. When his master deems curiosity satisfied, he summons Gulliver one morning to sit at a distance, an honor never offered before. The master has weighed the whole story and concludes that humans received a pittance of reason and used it only to worsen natural corruption. Government and law, he says, prove the defect; Gulliver has concealed particulars and often said the thing which was not. Yahoo minds match human manners: they fight over food though fifty could be fed, hoard shining stones they cannot use, and battle over dead cattle. When a hidden heap is removed, one Yahoo howls until the stones return. Two Yahoos quarrel over a stone and a third runs off with it, which the master compares to lawsuits. The master catalogues gluttony, stolen food, intoxicating roots, and a disease cured by dung and urine, which Gulliver dryly recommends to his countrymen. He describes a deformed ruling Yahoo, a favorite who licks his master's feet, and the herd's excrement when the favorite falls. He notes Yahoo spleen cured by hard work, female coquetry, and spite among females. Gulliver expects accusation of polished vices peculiar to civilized mankind, but finds even those rudiments reflected among the brutes. He has no reply.