Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels

I read Gulliver's Travels recently. I suspect that I may have read an expurgated version as a child--there are aspects to it that are a bit scatological. There's a tendency to forget that much of the notions of appropriate topics that were common into the 1960s are a Victorian invention. Bodily functions were not quite so delicate a subject when Jonathan Swift published Gulliver's Travels in 1726.

Anyway, it's a book that recounts a ship's surgeon's adventures in four different nations, while on four different trips. Most of us know only the two first two parts: the land of Lilliput and the land of Brobdingnag, and to be honest, these are by far the most entertaining parts of the novel.

Now, you may think the notion that there could be a nation where everything is 1/12th our size--six inch tall people, sheep that you could put in your pocket, structure fires that our hero can put out by unbuttoning his fly--is pretty fantastic. Ditto for Brobdingnag, where everything is ten times as large.

But think of the times. Europeans were sailing to remote parts of the world--and finding some pygmies in some places--and some very tall Africans. And not just people--sometimes, they were coming across pygmy animals--and remarkably large birds, like the dodo. If you haven't studied the consequences of the square/cube law, it would be easy to imagine that the same mechanisms that encouraged small and large variations could go all the way up and down the scale--and there was still a lot of the world left to be explored. There could still be an island like Lilliput in the South Indian Ocean in 1726--and it was just barely possible that there could be an island like Brobdingnag somewhere between Washington State and Japan.

The second two parts of the tale--the voyage to Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms--I found far less compelling. Laputa is a mildly interesting story, but what really mkes it stand out is Swift's ferocious attack on intellectuals completely isolated from reality in the Academy:

The first Man I saw was of a meager Aspect, with sooty Hands and Face, his Hair and Beard long, ragged and singed in several Places. His Cloathes, Shirt, and Skin were all of the same Colour. He had been Eight Years upon a Project for extracting Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers, which were to be put into Vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the Air in raw inclement Summers. He told me he did not doubt in Eight Years more he should be able to supply the Governors Gardens with Sun-shine at a reasonable Rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and intreated me to give him something as an Encouragement to Ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear Season for Cucumbers.

....

There was a most ingenious Architect who had contrived a new Method for building Houses, by beginning at the Roof, and working downwards to the Foundation; which he justified to me by the like Practice of those two prudent Insects, the Bee and the Spider.

There was a Man born blind, who had several Apprentices in his own Condition: Their Employment was to mix Colours for Painters, which their Master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed my Misfortune to find them at that Time not very perfect in their Lessons; and the Professor himself happened to be generally mistaken: This Artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole Fraternity.

In another Apartment I was highly pleased with a Projector, who had found a Device of plowing the Ground with Hogs, to save the Charges of Plows, Cattle, and Labour. The Method in this: In an Acre of Ground you bury at six Inches Distance, and eight deep, a Quantity of Acorns, Dates, Chestnuts, and other Maste or Vegetables whereof these Animals are fondest; then you drive six Hundred or more of them into the Field, where in a few Days they will root up the whole Ground in search of their Food, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time manuring it with their Dung. It is true, upon Experiment they found the Charge and Trouble very great, and they had little or no Crop. However, it is not doubted that this Invention may be capable of great Improvement.

As an amateur astronomer, one section that I knew was in there--but still found its prescience quite astonishing--is concerning the satellites of Mars:

They have likewise discovered two lesser Stars, or Satellites, which revolve about Mars; whereof the innermost is distant from the Center of the primary Planet exactly three of his Diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten Hours, and the latter in Twenty-one and an Half; so that the Squares of their periodical Times, are very near in the same Proportion with the Cubes of their Distance from the Center of Mars; which evidently shews them to be governed by the same Law of Gravitation, that influences the other heavenly Bodies.

Phobos is actually a bit closer (it revolves in about 7.3 hours) and Deimos is actually a bit farther out (about 30 hours), but still quite astonishing, since it was 1877 before Asaph Hall found them--and there was simply no basis for assuming that Mars even had satellites.

The most poignant part of the Laputa story is the discussion of age. In Laputa, there is a small population of immortals who may die by accident, or murder, but do not have a natural death. But Swift's description of what happens as they age reminds me of Larry Niven's science fiction novels where boosterspice allows humans to live almost indefinitely--but after a few hundred years, grow tired of it. Swift describes a life with all the disadvantages of age--senility, declining vision, hearing, and memory. Swift was an Anglican priest, and I suspect that his goal here was to remind people that there are virtues to accepting that death comes, and there is something beyond that is preferable.

There is much throughout the book that shows that Swift was disgusted by religious intolerance and the corruption caused by aristocracy and politics. Yet in spite of his position as a clergyman, there is an awful lot here that suggests that Swift wasn't too keen on Christianity--at least, as it was practiced in Britain at the time. The last section of the book, in the land of the Houyhnhnms (think intelligent and peaceful horses, with primitive almost chimp-like protohumans as their slaves), seems at times to go way overboard in its misanthropy and Rousseauian worship of the "noble savage." It was easily the least satisfactory section, and I can't say that I found much to say in its favor.