The author at his master’s command, informs him of the state of England. The causes of war among the princes of Europe. The author begins to explain the English constitution.
Over the next two years, I had frequent opportunities to converse with my master as my command of the Houyhnhnm language improved. I attempted to lay before him the entire state of Europe, discussing our trade, arts, and sciences. However, I shall focus here on our discussions regarding my own country. My only concern is that I may fail to do justice to my master’s profound arguments, which will inevitably suffer from being translated into our relatively crude English tongue.
In obedience to his commands, I related the history of our recent revolutions and the long, exhausting wars with France. These conflicts involved the greatest powers in the world and had been raging for years. At his request, I estimated that nearly a million Yahoos might have been killed during these wars, with hundreds of cities captured and countless ships destroyed.
When he asked about the usual motives for war, I explained that they were far too numerous to list, though I mentioned a few primary causes. Sometimes, it is the sheer ambition of princes who believe they can never govern enough land or people. At other times, it is the corruption of ministers who involve their nation in a war to distract the public from their own failed administration. Most tragically, differences in opinion have cost millions of lives—for instance, whether a certain piece of bread is actually flesh, or whether a specific juice is blood or wine. These trivial disputes over religious or political details often lead to the most furious and bloody conflicts.
I added that wars are frequently fought to decide which prince should seize the territory of a third party, or out of a preemptive fear that a neighbor might attack first. Sometimes we invade a country because it is too strong, and other times because it is weak enough to be easily conquered. It is considered "justifiable" to attack an ally if one of their towns is geographically convenient for us, or to invade a poor nation to "civilize" them through slaughter and slavery. Consequently, the profession of a soldier is held in high honor; a soldier is essentially a Yahoo hired to kill as many of his own species as possible in cold blood.
My master listened with a mixture of confusion and disgust. "What you have told me," he remarked, "reveals the true effects of that 'reason' you claim to possess. However, it is perhaps a blessing that your physical nature makes you incapable of doing much harm. Your mouths are too flat to bite effectively, and your claws are so short and tender that one of our Yahoos could easily drive away a dozen of yours. Therefore, when you speak of thousands being killed, I suspect you are 'saying the thing which is not.'"
I could not help but smile at his innocence. Being well-acquainted with the art of war, I provided a vivid description of cannons, muskets, and bayonets. I spoke of sieges, retreats, and bombardments; of ships sinking with a thousand men on board; of the deafening noise and the fields covered with corpses left for birds of prey. To demonstrate the bravery of my countrymen, I described how I had seen a hundred enemies blown up at once during a siege, their bodies falling back to earth in pieces.
My master commanded me to be silent. He said that while he already hated the Yahoos of his own country, he did not blame them for their savage nature any more than he blamed a bird of prey for its cruelty. However, when a creature pretending to possess reason was capable of such atrocities, he feared that the corruption of that faculty was far worse than simple brutality. He concluded that we did not possess true reason, but rather some quality that only served to magnify our natural vices.
He then moved to another point that perplexed him. I had mentioned that some of my crew had been ruined by "law." He found it impossible to understand how a system intended for a person’s protection could lead to their destruction. He believed that nature and reason were sufficient guides for any sensible animal.
I explained that law in my country is a complex science. "There is a society of men," I said, "trained from their youth to prove that white is black and black is white, depending on how much they are paid. For example, if my neighbor wants to take my cow, he hires a lawyer to prove the cow should be his. I must then hire another lawyer to defend my rights, as it is against the rules for a man to speak for himself."
I described how judges—selected from the most cunning of these lawyers—are often biased against truth and equity. "In these courts," I continued, "lawyers studiously avoid the actual merits of the case. They do not care who truly owns the cow, but will spend years arguing over whether the cow is red or black, or whether the field she grazed in was round or square. They rely on 'precedents'—decisions made long ago, even if those decisions were unjust—to justify new errors. They use a specialized jargon that no one else can understand, ensuring that a simple dispute can take thirty years to resolve."
My master remarked that it was a pity men with such sharp minds were not encouraged to be instructors of wisdom. I assured him that, outside of their own profession, these lawyers were usually the most ignorant and narrow-minded people among us, and were generally enemies to all real knowledge and learning.