pression, the Houyhnhnms recoil in indignity when Gulliver informs him Houyhnhnms are castrated and made servile in his homeland. After describing the warring and destruction habits of the Yahoos, we see the Houyhnhnms have the virtue of not tolerating violence against others in rational men, “Although he hated the Yahoos of this country, yet he no more blamed them for their odious qualities, than he did a gnnayh for its cruelty, or a sharp stone for cutting his hoof. But when the creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself” (Swift 451).
The Houyhnhnms do not know the hate and self-violence against their own species that the Yahoos do or European imperialists exhibit toward slaves. In fact, the Houyhnhnms share the fact with Gulliver that Yahoos hate each other more than any different species of animal. He also contends that Yahoos are greedy and avaricious and, even in the midst of plenty, will combat against each other to selfishly hoard more than they need, “If you throw among five Yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself” (Swift 459). The Houyhnhnms have the virtue of desiring no more than they need for self-sustenance and the same goes with their labor and its production. The Houyhnhnms possess virtues that make their culture appear like a collective Adam and Eve, devoid of free will and unaware of evil. As Gulliver explains, “As these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by Nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature; so their grand maxim is to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it” (Swift 464).
Nonetheless, the lack of emotion does appear to put the Houyhnhnms in possession of many virtues ...