The Houyhnhnms are a race of rational, civilized horses that Gulliver encounters when he reaches Houyhnhnm Land. To a large extent, they represent the better part of human nature, with the Yahoos representing the worst. The Houyhnhnms live according to nature, and theirs is a simple life subject to rational laws. This is the ideal we often set for ourselves as human beings. Yet one doesn't have to be as fiercely misanthropic as Swift to see that far...
The Houyhnhnms are a race of rational, civilized horses that Gulliver encounters when he reaches Houyhnhnm Land. To a large extent, they represent the better part of human nature, with the Yahoos representing the worst. The Houyhnhnms live according to nature, and theirs is a simple life subject to rational laws. This is the ideal we often set for ourselves as human beings. Yet one doesn't have to be as fiercely misanthropic as Swift to see that far too often we fall well short of such noble ambitions.
In theological terms, the Houyhnhnms can be seen as symbolizing man's prelapsarian existence. In Christianity, this refers to how human beings were before the Fall, the punishment inflicted upon humankind for the sins of Adam and Eve. The society of the Houyhnhnms is far removed from any arrangement that fallen humanity could ever establish in the real world. They live in a state of innocence, with no understanding of lying, for example. As they have never fallen from grace, so they remain completely free from corruption. As such, they would have no need for God's saving grace, which for a clergyman like Swift would make them far from being an ideal to which we should aspire.
If the Houyhnhnms are at one end of the scale, and the Yahoos are at the other, we as human beings are stuck somewhere in the middle--rational beings who often behave atrociously, yet nonetheless capable of being saved.
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