Yahoos and Houyhnhnms: Two Ways of Being — Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver asks leave to walk among the neighbourhood Yahoos, sure his hatred will keep him uncorrupted. His master sends a sorrel nag as guard. When Gulliver strips his arms, the herds treat him as kin and still hate him, like a tame jackdaw among wild ones. He seizes a three-year-old male to soothe it; the cub squalls, bites, and voids yellow filth over his clothes. A brook wash and a long airing are the price of returning to the house.

On a hot day he bathes naked in a river. A young female Yahoo leaps in and embraces him. He roars; the nag gallops up; she quits the grasp and howls from the far bank while he dresses. The household takes it as diversion. Gulliver cannot deny he is a Yahoo in every limb, since their females took him for their own.

Then he turns to the horses who have no word for opinion. Reason, they say, strikes at once; controversy in a doubtful claim is unknown. Friendship runs to strangers as to neighbours. Marriages match colour and strength, not courtship. At youth festivals, servants drive Yahoos in with hay and milk, then drive them out of sight. Every fourth year a council balances hay, oats, cows, and Yahoos across districts, and reassigns colts when a family loses a child. The same reason that cannot argue a point can still count him as stock.