SOURCE: "Didactic Content of the 'Philosophic Voyage,'" in Gulliver's Travels: A Critical Study, Russell & Russell, 1963, pp. 40-50.

Turning now from the story form of the Philosophic Voyage and from its interest as a romantic tale, let us examine the author's purpose in writing. In its fully developed form the Philosophic Voyage was always a vehicle for ideas, never an end in itself. Swift's avowed aim in writing Gulliver was "to vex, not to divert, the world"⁽¹⁾. The survey of the motives, satiric and philosophic, which run through the fore-runners of Gulliver must be here very brief. The four Voyages of Gulliver present so many different criticisms of life that it would be impossible to bring the study to a definite focus as was done with the narrative form. The distinct purpose and satiric method used by Swift in each voyage will be discussed later when the situations are studied in turn.

As has been already suggested, a number of the Fantastic Voyages, concerned themselves with fanciful, and wholly impossible, trips of exploration, in the interests of speculative science. Cyrano de Bergerac and his imitators⁽²⁾ sent their travellers to the moon, the sun, or to the center of the earth, where conversation with the better informed inhabitants disclosed new theories about the constitution of matter, the laws of physics, and the habitation of the planets. In this connexion it is to be noted simply that this motive of scientific speculation is almost wholly absent from Gulliver⁽³⁾.

Obviously the connection is to be sought, not in abstract philosophy but in satire. No one of the forerunners is so exclusively a work of satire as is Gulliver, and yet satire is usually included; sometimes it is incidental, again it is organic. In quality it ranges from the mild ridicule heaped upon the Lilliputians to the intense misanthropy represented in the picture of the Yahoos. It has been a notable blunder of criticism to suppose that the latter was peculiar to Swift. The satiric method employed by Swift's predecessors was almost invariably that of a contrast between the degenerate state of Western civilization, represented by the traveller, and the ideal life of the people visited. Gulliver's fourth voyage, to the land of the Houyhnhnms, and the latter portion of his second voyage, to Brobdingnag, conform to this type. It is not necessary to seek the elaboration of this method in the pure Utopian literature of Plato's Republic, Campanella's Civitas Solis, More's Utopia, or Bacon's New Atlantis. The ideal commonwealth appeared frequently in combination with imaginary adventures as in Gulliver. These ideal commonwealths are of two general types. A race, living in a state of innocence, is found to be the product of ideal government, unselfish customs, and benevolent religion, subject to the laws of charity and justice alone. Such are the Lunarians of Cyrano's first romance, L'Histoire Comique de la Lune, and the Potuans whom Klimius encounters underground. The satire in Voyages of this type is implied in the contrast with European practices, or it is brought out more directly by the surprise with which the natives receive the traveller's account of kings, priests, and lawyers, in his own world. On the whole, however, the stress is placed upon the objective description of the Utopia, in the organization of which there is a wearisome repetition of the formula, charity and justice, which shows the literature to be a phase of the deistic trend of contemporary thought⁽⁴⁾.

A variation of this satiric method only a little less popular, is a contrast between European civilization and a superior race of animals, just as in the fourth voyage of Gulliver. Here the accent is shifted from the Utopian quality of the new civilization to a direct satire on mankind. This use of animals is much older than Aesop himself. In general, however, the fable literature, including the cycle of Reynard the Fox, presents an allegory in which the vices and foibles of the human race are identified with, or disguised under, the actions of the animals. For the contrast between man and beast, resulting in the humiliation of man, there was plenty of precedent. The tradition of Ulysses and the beasts⁽⁵⁾, popularized by Giovanni Gelli in his Circe⁽⁶⁾ and by Howell in the Parley of the Beasts⁽⁷⁾, represents the beasts refusing to return to their human shape, and perfectly contented with their animal life. In d'Ablancourt's Sequel to Lucian's True History, and in Cyrano's second romance, L'Histoire comique du soleil, both known to Swift⁽⁸⁾, the traveller finds himself despised by a race of animals who refuse to confirm his claim to the status of a reasonable creature. As will appear in my study of the sources, the satire on man in Cyrano is not less brutal than in Gulliver's fourth voyage.

According to Swift, Gulliver does not have to go to the moon, or to the center of the earth to find ideal beings. His travels are confined to this world, in the remote regions of which live the amiable Houyhnhnms and the gentle Brobdingnagians. It is a point very much to the credit of Swift that his ideal races are after all creatures of his imagination, giants and horses, and not natives of India or China. The Utopias of the Philosophic Voyages, the voluminous literature of the Oriental Traveller⁽⁹⁾, of Montesquieu, DuFresne, Tom Brown, Lyttleton, and Goldsmith, all are marked by cheap sentimentality,—that of the "long distance" illusion. The Australian, Chinaman, Hindoo, or whatnot, is represented as nature's unspoiled child, a sort of Israelite in whom there is no guile, who cannot comprehend the diseases, tyrannies, and vices of the Christian world. The illusion seemed to spring from a theorem that virtue increased as the square of the distance from Europe. It is the sort of sentimentality familiar enough to us today in the writings of H. G. Wells⁽¹⁰⁾ and in the pages of the so-called "liberal" magazines where we find it written that Trotsky of all statesmen is alone sincere, and China, an untainted nation of peaceable villages. It is the illusion which has started a wave of sympathy in favor of the "much abused" Turk, for the wrongs he has suffered at the hand of Christendom, a sympathy never felt by those who have lived under the shadow of the Crescent. From the charge of such nonsense, of which most of his predecessors were more or less guilty, the author of Gulliver can be acquitted.

In Gulliver another method is followed besides that of contrast between civilizations, and that is the allegorical device of representing the life of the Western world under a disguise. This is the case in Lilliput, Laputa, and the earlier chapters of Brobdingnag⁽¹¹⁾, where the animal called man is made to appear ridiculous, stupid, or disgusting. While this method of satire seems simple enough, it is exceedingly hard to manage, and was actually very rarely employed⁽¹²⁾ in the Philosophic Voyage before Gulliver. Once made famous by Swift, the idea was copied in a dozen imitations⁽¹³⁾, in which Lilliput was England; Blefuscu, Ireland; Flimnap, the prime minister; Nardac, a nobleman; and so forth.

Since Gulliver's Travels owed so much of its immediate popularity to this allegorical representation of human society, it will be of interest to notice two examples of it in the Philosophic Voyage before Swift. In Baron Holberg's Journey of Klimius to the World Underground, a work which Swift in all probability did not know⁽¹⁴⁾, the traveller visits a number of subterranean countries, most of which are contrasted with our world, but two of which are identified with conditions above ground. Lalac is a land inhabited by an idle aristocracy, whose uninterrupted luxury is attended by consequent misery⁽¹⁵⁾. This is very obviously a picture of court life in Europe. Mascathia is the land of the philosophers. The country is filthy and uncultivated, the philosophers are indistinguishable from pigs. So busy have they been in devising a way to reach the sun and the stars, that they have had no time to improve their own world. To the traveller's practical questions they return absurd and incoherent answers. The author makes it plain that Mascathia is a satire upon academicians, of the same type that we find in Gulliver's voyage to Laputa⁽¹⁶⁾.

Another instance of this satiric method is to be found in an obscure Latin satire by Joseph Hall, Mundus Alter et Idem⁽¹⁷⁾, which has never been mentioned in connection with Gulliver, even though, as I shall show in the next chapter, it is not unlikely that it was known to Swift. This work, written about the year 1610, is the reverse of the Utopia. The author embarks on the good ship Phantasy for a new world located somewhere in Australia, which is conceived of as the duplicate of the Western world, except that the vices and weaknesses of human nature are assigned to separate provinces instead of being spread out over the entire country as in Europe. As the satire has never been translated in full, and is practically unknown, I will give a brief account of it to bring out the unique relation which it bears to the satiric method of Swift in a part of Gulliver's Travels.

The first country to be visited is Crapula, the land of inebriate excess. It is divided into two provinces, Pamphagonia (or Gluttony) and Yvronia (or Drunkenness). In the capital cities, Livona and Roncara (Snort and Snore), the people sleep continually. The natives are all monks who worship their God, Time, because he eats everything. Adjacent to Crapula is the desert Terra Sancta (Holy Land) which is uninhabited and unexplored. Moronia (Foolsland) is at once the most populous and the most uncultivated of all. There the natives go about naked in winter that the warmth may enter their bodies readily, whereas in mid-summer they wear heavy coats to shut out the heat. Moronia is inhabited by a stupid Philistine class who are subject to the rule of the aristocratic Laverians, or thieves. In Moronia there is an academy of innovators, not unlike the one visited by Gulliver at Lagado, where the single idea is to invent something new, no matter how useless it may be. The innovators have replaced language by a mystical speech, of which several pages of sample vocabulary are given. For example, "ointment," in this language is simplified to "Oppodeltoch;" "spirit" to Nenufarenicaballi;" "health" to "Zeninephidei;" "Mercury" to "Diatessdelton;" etc. The intellectual wizard who invented this Honorificabilitudinitatibus is none other than Bustius Hohenheimus—the headmaster. The treatment is throughout light and witty, and the satire, very obvious. But the method of holding up to ridicule the achievements of the western world is the rare method employed in Gulliver's voyages to Lilliput and Laputa.

So much for the general method and setting for satire in the Philosophic Voyage. In regard to the specific objects of satire, there does not seem to be any important development to note. While the choice of subject varies slightly from one author to another, for the most part the range is the same. From Lucian to Swift, the offensive is directed at historians, academicians, lawyers and court procedure, physicians, kings, priests and religion. In Gulliver the list is quite as long as in any of the earlier works, but the omission of religion is a conspicuous departure from precedent. The allusion made in passing to the High Church and Low Church parties in Lilliput⁽¹⁹⁾ involves no question of religion, but only a reflection upon the motives of expediency which determined the piety of King George I, and the Prince of Wales. If Swift had followed the tradition of his predecessors he could, like Rabelais⁽²⁰⁾, have charged Christianity with the guilt of the world's insincerity and disease; and in the manner of the French deists⁽²¹⁾ he could have portrayed the sweet and charming piety of the Hindoos or Confucianists as the ideal. That we do not find this in Gulliver might be adequately explained by the assumption that Swift knew something about the "gentle" practices of the Hindoos, but this is not necessary. From other of his writings it is clear enough that Swift was not one of those who deny the power of Christianity because they find its obligations inconvenient. In fact, the Christian Gulliver, though bad enough, is ranked by the Houyhnhnms above the Yahoos⁽²²⁾, who unquestionably represent the destiny of a race ruled by instinct and passion alone. Swift is not a Platonist. Man left to his own devices will not discover the eternal pattern of truth in the stars, for he is loath to look up. At best he may discover its blurred reflection in the mud.

This is perhaps the best place to consider some of the more general features of the satiric style of Gulliver's Travels, a style famous for its sustained irony and biting wit, in its relation to its fore-runners. In most of the Philosophic Voyages there is no great merit of style and seldom anything that is even consistent. The styles of Lucian, Cyrano and their imitators are for the most part nondescript. One chapter is in the ironic vein, another purely comic, and still another of a straight narrative character. Where there is real art, it is of an eclectic and variable type. Two authors, however, have contributed materially to the method of Swift in Gulliver. To an imitation of the works of Rabelais⁽²³⁾, which Swift knew well and quoted from memory, must be assigned the fondness for the filth of the body with its odors, excrements, and pollutions, which appears in Gulliver⁽²⁴⁾. In Rabelais this element of obscenity is drawn out to burlesque proportions, while in Gulliver it is restrained though not refined. Where Rabelais delights in filth for comical effect, Swift's use of it is always disgusting and never suggestive. The general ideas for Gulliver's method of extinguishing the fire at the palace of Lilliput⁽²⁵⁾ and for the occupations of some of the professors at Lagado⁽²⁶⁾, were borrowed from similar situations in Rabelais, as I will show later; but the contrast in diction and tone is the contrast that would exist between a treatise on human physiology and a corresponding anecdote as told in the rear of any saloon.

Swift owes a more considerable debt to the style of his elder contemporary Thomas Brown, a pamphleteer of no mean ability, whose works have been shown to have been assimilated and extensively imitated by Swift⁽²⁷⁾. Brown in turn was steeped in the satiric hu mor of Lucian and Rabelais⁽²⁸⁾. His writings carry on the latter's note of obscenity, which appears in combination with sustained irony of the kind found in Gulliver. Brown's satire is less grotesque than that of Rabelais, and at the same time not so restrained nor so well proportioned as that of Swift. Rabelais writes with the queer turns of wit peculiar to the drunken man; Brown, with more coherence of thought and with much more consistent drollery, gives the effect of one who has taken a glass too much; but Swift is always sober. The danger is likely to be that Brown's influence be understated, rather than exaggerated. Just as in the Bicker-staff papers Swift continued Brown's joke at the expense of the astrologer Partridge⁽²⁹⁾, so in Gulliver, pages, satirizing physicians, soldiers, and lawyers, are all but verbal counterparts of similar passages in the works of Brown.

In general, the satiric treatment in Gulliver can be distinguished in three ways from the style of earlier Voyages. It is marked first of all by its pregnancy of thought, condensed to a degree that is frequently epigrammatic. Lucian pounds away at his historians, repeating endlessly that they are all liars, each time as though he were confiding a state secret, until the idea is all surface with no depth. Rabelais runs on and on with his cumulation of incident and synonym without knowing where to stop. The essence of his wit is good, but it could be extracted and bound up into a very thin volume. In Gulliver every paragraph is essential. The reader is surprised with satire within satire, with the ingenious wit which turns the subject over and over, always revealing something new. That which sets Swift above not only the other writers of Philosophic Voyages, but above all the other Queen Anne wits is the amazing number of his ideas per square inch.

A second distinction of Gulliver is the consistent pertinence of its prose style. Tom Brown crowds ideas into condensed space, but it was left for Swift to sort them out. In Gulliver there are no excursions into irrelevant fields, the main theme is never forgotten. The narratives of Cyrano are broken by the introduction of tiresome arguments about the nature of a vacuum and the constitution of the atom; and in most of the Philosophic Voyages incidents are introduced for their own sake alone. In Gulliver, the minutest detail, whether it be the measurements of pygmy life or a humorous incident, is essential. Not only is every idea essential, but the most insignificant details are stated with extreme accuracy. The size of the bed made for Gulliver by the pygmies, as well as his rations, are computed with the most scrupulous regard for the relative proportions assumed⁽³⁰⁾, in contrast to Rabelais' reckless method of shovelling hundreds of steaks and pies down the throat of his giant, Gargantua⁽³¹⁾. Minimum of digression and the lack of confusion found in Gulliver's Travels is the sort of achievement that comes but seldom, and then only with fasting and prayer.

Finally, the style of Gulliver is marked by an elevated tone, dignified and grave. Though Swift borrowed some of Robelais' obscene ideas, he avoided the latter's scurilous language. This quality of classical restraint in diction is at once both an hindrance and a help. A certain gaiety and lightness of touch, in dealing with the comic, is lost. On the other hand the solemn treatment of trifles is a very effective device for ridiculing the petty actions of men, clothing them as it does with mock dignity. The net result is satire less spontaneous and comical than in some of the earlier Voyages, but infinitely more effective.

In conclusion, what are the achievements of Swift in satire in Gulliver's Travels, apart from the characteristics of style just considered? He must be credited with the originality of the idea which runs through the first two voyages, of first reducing and then magnifying the proportions of life to reveal its pettiness and its ugliness together. Lucian's Voyage to Heaven describes an insignificant world as it appears from a great height, but there is much more than this in Gulliver⁽³²⁾. Expanding a bare suggestion in Cyrano, Swift conceives of a relativity in human affairs, in accordance with which false sources of pride can be at once detected when they are viewed in true perspective. This satire of proportion becomes his acid test of true values. He discovers that dominion, rank, feminine beauty, etc., are of relative value, but there is no indication that courage, devotion, or intelligence would change its aspect in Lilliput or Brobdingnag⁽³³⁾. Gulliver's third Voyage is the most imitative, repeating for the most part borrowed ideas. By common consent of readers it is the least interesting of all⁽³⁴⁾. The satire in the fourth Voyage has been considered most distinctively Swiftian, though it is less original than the satire in the first two voyages. Contrary to the statements made by Sir Walter Scott, Temple Scott, John Churton Collins and others⁽³⁵⁾, the complete condemnation of the human race embodied in the contrast between the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos is not without precedent,—the same satire, no less brutal, is in the second romance of Cyrano, a work that was more carefully read by Swift than it has been by his editors and critics since. There is, however, something original about the satire in this Voyage, not its brutality, but something else which a study of the fore-runners of Gulliver has made very clear.

In all earlier Voyages when man was condemned in the presence of animals, the condemnation was of civilized man. The fault was with his perverted training, his unnatural practices, his abuse of intelligence, and his tyrannous institutions, the state and the church. The philosophical position taken was the plea for a return to nature, as described in the animal kingdoms. All of this appears in Gulliver's fourth voyage with the important difference that the lowest and filthiest lot is reserved for the native Yahoo who is not a product of European civilization at all, but man in a state of nature, "cunning, malicious, libidinous, cowardly and insolent"⁽³⁶⁾. Not that Swift takes refuge in civilization, the condemnation of Gulliver is plain enough. But Gulliver is allowed by the Houyhnhnms to be endowed with a spark of intelligence, by so much above the Yahoos; the Governor of the Houyhnhnms even fears that Gulliver may be contaminated by contact with the Yahoos. No hope can be found for the race anywhere, certainly not in letting it run wild according to the notions of the individualist. The conclusion is complete pessimism. The best thing that can be done is to subject the race to some rules imposed from without, thereby curbing the mischief which it fain would accomplish. If it be true, as a study by C. H. Firth⁽³⁷⁾ has rendered probable, that in the Yahoos, Swift represents especially the degenerate natives of Ireland, then we are only more justified in concluding that the author of Gulliver's fourth voyage was at heart an imperialist, though indeed a very pessimistic one. He would no doubt modify the doctrine of the "White Man's Burden" to make the white man a part of a burden. At any rate Swift makes it very clear that his indictment includes all mankind. The Abbé DesFontaines, who translated Gulliver into French, wrote to Swift apologizing for his excision of the more objectionable passages, which he said, with characteristic conceit, were inapplicable to the French, though no doubt they were fair descriptions of the English⁽³⁸⁾. To this Swift replied sharply, "The same vices and follies reign everywhere; if I had written of England alone, or of this century alone, so far from meriting translation, my work would not deserve to be read"⁽³⁹⁾. The misanthropy increases steadily from the first voyage, where man appears as a strutting Lilliputian to the fourth, where he is a loathsome Yahoo. The pessismism extends, moreover, to all creatures. The peace-loving Brobdingnagians, when examined at close quarters, are ugly and disgusting⁽⁴⁰⁾; the amiable Houyhnhnms, though virtuous and harmless, are at the same time ignorant, stupid, and innocent of any achievement of genius. The world through which Gulliver travels is a very bad world, and man is the worst creature on it.

Notes

⁽¹⁾ Swift to Pope, Sept. 29, 1725. Correspondence, III, 276.

⁽²⁾ Holberg's, Klimius; the anonymous Voyage du Pôle Arctique au Pôle Antarctique, and Relation du Monde de Mercure; Mouhy's Lamékis; and Roumier's Voyages de Céton dans les Sept Pianettes. See Bibliography.

⁽³⁾ I say "almost" because there is, in the second voyage, a reminiscence of the debate on biology that takes place in Cyrano's Histoire de la Lune, in the argument over Gulliver's origin and species. Gulliver, 106. See further chapter 7, below.

⁽⁴⁾ Atkinson has made a careful and detailed study of the deistic and rationalistic content of the Realistic Voyages in French, op. cit.

⁽⁵⁾ Based on the Odyssey. The tradition first took an independent form in Plutarch's dialogue entitled, "That Brute Beasts Make Use of Reason," in which Ulysses vainly argues with Gryllus to reassume his human shape. (Plutarch's Morals, translated from the Greek by several eminent hands, London, 1704, V, 203-216.) Plutarch was one of Swift's favorite authors. Prose Works, XII, 364.

⁽⁶⁾ Translated into English by Tom Brown, 1702, and very likely a part of the latter's works which Swift had "read entire." (See Prose Works, XI, 221. Introduction to "Polite Conversation.")

⁽⁷⁾ 1660. The complete title reads, The Parley of the Beasts; or Morphandra, Queen of the Enchanted Island. Wherein Men were found, who being transmuted to Beasts, though proffered to be disenchanted, and to become Men again; yet in regard of the crying sins and rebellious humors of the times, they prefer the life of a brute animal before that of a rational creature. Which fancy consists of various philosophical discussions … touching the declinings of the world, and late depravation of human nature. With reflexes upon the present state of most countries in Christendom. Divided into XI sections. By Jam. Howell, Esq. In the preface the author alludes to Gelli as the one who "taught the beasts their grammar."

⁽⁸⁾ See further, chapter 4, below.

⁽⁹⁾ See Bibliography under these names. Also, M. P. Conant, op. cit.

⁽¹⁰⁾ Especially Wells' articles written after his visit to Russia in 1920, in which he contrasts the "sincerity" and "highmindedness" of the Soviet demagogues with the corruption of the Allied statesmen.

⁽¹¹⁾ The two-fold nature of the satire of the second voyage is discussed in chapter 8 below.

⁽¹²⁾ This sort of allegory seems not to have occurred to most of the writers of Philosophic Voyages. Their tendency was rather to have the traveller discover something new and different from European custom, hence the predominance of Utopian contrast instead of allegory. There were, however, purely allegorical works which do not concern us here directly because of their lack of genuine adventure. So-called Voyages were written describing "fake" countries, not located anywhere. See Fontaines' Pays de Jansénie, 1664; Tallemant's Isle d'Amour, 1663; and other allegories of the Bunyan type, listed together in the Bibliography.

⁽¹³⁾ See the list of imitations, appended to Part III, below.

⁽¹⁴⁾ For a more general description of the work, see chapter 1, above. The possibility of its influence upon Gulliver is discussed in chapter 4.

⁽¹⁵⁾Klimius, 147-150.

⁽¹⁶⁾Ibid, 167-177.

⁽¹⁷⁾ The only edition I have seen is one dated 1643, 1 vol. in-12, in which the Mundus is bound with Bacon's New Atlantis, and Campanella's Civitas Solis, all in Latin. The first six chapters of the Mundus were translated into English by Swift's friend, Dr. William King, sometime before 1711. (See further, chapter 4, below.) This fragmentary translation may be found in Morley's Ideal Commonwealths, 1896.

⁽¹⁹⁾Gulliver, 48. (Lilliput, chapter 4.)

⁽²⁰⁾ See synopsis of Rabelais in chapter 1, above.

⁽²¹⁾ See Montesquieu, DuFresne, etc., works listed in the Bibliography under "Oriental Traveller."

⁽²²⁾ That Gulliver was a Christian is stated in Laputa, chapter XI. Gulliver, 226. Gulliver's superiority to the Yahoos is repeatedly stated by the Houyhnhnms, see especially, Houyhnhnms, chapter VIII, first paragraph.

⁽²³⁾ See the study of Rabelais as a source in chapter 4, below. Also my article in Mod. Lang. Notes, November, 1922.

⁽²⁴⁾ This is pointed out later in connection with the study of the situations in which it is most marked. See especially chapters 5-7, below.

⁽²⁵⁾Lilliput, chapter 5.

⁽²⁶⁾Laputa, chapters 5-6.

⁽²⁷⁾ See the source study and references in notes 68-71 in chapter 4, below.

⁽²⁸⁾ Brown's second volume consists of "Letters from the Dead to the Living, together with Dialogues of the Dead, after the manner of Lucian." The influence of Rabelais is evident throughout Brown's works, and he is directly quoted in the following places: I, 86-88; II, 93-96; IV, 57-62. (Edition, 1760.)

⁽²⁹⁾ See chapter 4, below.

⁽³⁰⁾ See chapter 5, below.

⁽³¹⁾ Rebelais, Book I, chapter 37.

⁽³²⁾ See my study of Lucian as a source, chapter 4, below. Also my article in Mod. Lang. Notes, June, 1922.

⁽³³⁾ See further chapter 8, below.

⁽³⁴⁾ See contemporary opinions of the third voyage quoted in chapter 4, note 24, below.

⁽³⁵⁾ All of whom depend upon the worthless thesis of Borkowsky in Anglia, XV. See Cyrano as a source in chapter 4, below.

⁽³⁶⁾Gulliver, 277.

⁽³⁷⁾The Political Significance of "Gulliver's Travels," C. H. Firth. (Proceedings of the British Academy, IX, 1920.)

⁽³⁸⁾ DesFontaines to Swift, July 4, 1727. Correspondence, III, 397-8.

⁽³⁹⁾ Swift to DesFontaines, July, 1727. Correspondence, III, 406-7.

⁽⁴⁰⁾ For the double picture of the Brobdingnagians, see chapter 8, below.