In his voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver describes the horses’ experience with death saying, “If they can avoid casualties, they die only of old age, and are buried in the obscurest places that can be found, their friends and relations expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure; nor does the dying person discover the least regret that he is leaving the world, any more than if he were upon returning home from a visit to one of his neighbors (Swift, 162).” The horses’ approach to death is, pardon the irony, inhumane. In one instance, a Houyhnhnm is late to Gulliver’s place of residence because her husband died that morning and she had to bury him. The lack of emotion associated with death is chilling. Yet, to Gulliver, this approach is part of the peak of civilization.
In comparing the country of the Houyhnhnms to Europe, he finds Europe lacking. Yet, at least regarding death, Europe, and specifically the English, are similar to the Houyhnhnms. Just as the horses approach death without emotion, the English approach the death of peoples in their colonies with a similar lack of emotion. An uncountable number of African slaves died in the Atlantic Ocean and on inhumane plantations. Similarly, as ironically reflected in Swift’s A Modest Proposal, the English allowed the Irish to starve to the point that the only solution seemed to be “eating Irish babies.” In this case, the English could have and should have acted with more emotion. In fact, in many situations, indifference perpetuates injustice. Rather than universal rationality serving as the peak of human experience, a positive emotion, that of empathy, better serves humanity.