Reason and Otherness

After a short silence, he told me, “he did not know how I would take what he was going to say: that in the last general assembly, when the affair of the _Yahoos_ was entered upon, the representatives had taken offence at his keeping a _Yahoo_ (meaning myself) in his family, more like a _Houyhnhnm_ than a brute animal; that he was known frequently to converse with me, as if he could receive some advantage or pleasure in my company; that such a practice was not agreeable to reason or nature, or a thing ever heard of before among them; the assembly did therefore exhort him either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command me to swim back to the place whence I came: that the first of these expedients was utterly rejected by all the _Houyhnhnms_ who had ever seen me at his house or their own; for they alleged, that because I had some rudiments of reason, added to the natural pravity of those animals, it was to be feared I might be able to seduce them into the woody and mountainous parts of the country, and bring them in troops by night to destroy the _Houyhnhnms’_ cattle, as being naturally of the ravenous kind, and averse from labour.” My master added, “that he was daily pressed by the _Houyhnhnms_ of the neighbourhood to have the assembly’s exhortation executed, which he could not put off much longer.