In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift makes a satirical attack on humanity. In the final book, Swift takes a stab at humanity by simultaneously criticizing physiological, mental, and spiritual aspects of humans. Literary critics Ronald Knowles and Irvin Ehrenpreis both agree that the last book focused entirely on satirizing humanity. The Yahoo brutes that inhabit Houyhnhnm Land are a despicable species that have the physical appearance of humans. Though their behavior seems to be decadent and irrational, Swift shows that most of their behavior have parallels in the life of "civilized" humans. The Houyhnhnms seem to embody virtue and all the perfections that humans seek, but there are inconsistencies in their behavior that are reflective human faults. The Houyhnhnms do not look human in appearance, so Swift uses them to reveal hypocrisies of human thought. Throughout the book, Swift makes attacks on the religious perception of "man"; He also expresses disagreement with deist ideology. Ehrenpreis and Knowles have very similar opinions concerning Book IV of Gulliver's Travels, but Knowles expresses a more concrete interpretation of the satire.According to Ehrenpreis, Swift lived in John Locke's time, and takes many ideas of humanity from him. Locke said that humans tend to classify species as "man" by their physical appearance. If there was a man without reason, he would be a dull irrational "man", and if there was an animal could express reason, they would be an intelligent and rational "animal". To Ehrenpreis, the Yahoos "embody an ironical reflection upon the fact that the bulk of unthinking men do in practice treat external shape as a sounder guide to humanity than reasonable conduct." Besides being more primitive than humans, Yahoos behave and function like "civilized" humans. Knowles points out that Yahoos fight with other groups and each other without apparent reason. Their avarice for certain shiny stones of no prac...
