Gulliver's Travels Science Quotes Page 3
Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
| Quote #7 In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained; the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses, which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue [...] with many other wild, impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, "that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational, which some philosophers have not maintained for truth." (3.6.1) |
The idealism of the scientific projectors mostly makes Gulliver laugh (or get annoyed), but he claims to feel "melancholy" at the high hopes of the Political Projectors for a more ethical government. Why does Gulliver's tone suddenly shift? What is the object of satire in this paragraph – still the Projectors themselves, or something else?
