Quote 4
For if," said he, "you throw among five Yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself. [...]
My master further assured me, which I also observed myself, "that in the fields where the shining stones abound, the fiercest and most frequent battles are fought, occasioned by perpetual inroads of the neighbouring Yahoos." (4.7.6, 4.7.8)
Humans are greedy. Yes, we get it, already. But Gulliver's skewing both his and the Master Horse's examples against us by never pointing out that there have been examples of humans who have given freely of themselves. Like, what about Mother Theresa? How would you argue against Gulliver's assessment of humankind?
Quote 5
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. He doubted it would be impossible for me to swim to another country; and therefore wished I would contrive some sort of vehicle, resembling those I had described to him, that might carry me on the sea; in which work I should have the assistance of his own servants, as well as those of his neighbours." He concluded, "that for his own part, he could have been content to keep me in his service as long as I lived; because he found I had cured myself of some bad habits and dispositions, by endeavouring, as far as my inferior nature was capable, to imitate the Houyhnhnms." (4.10.7)
Sorry to all the Houyhnhnms out there, but as human beings, we find the Master Horse fairly obnoxious. Maybe we're just not rational enough to follow his supreme genius. The Houyhnhnms think Gulliver is a threat because they are concerned that he will encourage the other Yahoos of the island to rebel. They demand that Gulliver leave the island forever, and they make the Master Horse tell him so. But the Master Horse is kind enough to tell Gulliver that, for his own part, he would be happy to keep Gulliver as a servant, because Gulliver has worked so hard to overcome his "inferior nature." Patronizing, much? We have to take at least some of the Master Horse's conclusions about people with a grain of salt, because the Houyhnhnms are so intolerant of other ways of living or seeing the world.
Quote 6
My master told me, "there were some qualities remarkable in the Yahoos, which he had not observed me to mention, or at least very slightly, in the accounts I had given of humankind." He said, "those animals, like other brutes, had their females in common; but in this they differed, that the she Yahoo would admit the males while she was pregnant; and that the hes would quarrel and fight with the females, as fiercely as with each other; both which practices were such degrees of infamous brutality, as no other sensitive creature ever arrived at. (4.7.15)
The Master Horse is grossed out by the fact that human women (a) keep having sex during pregnancy (prude!), and (b) fight fiercely with human men. He also gets in a gibe that humans, "like other brutes, had their females in common." In other words, that human women can sleep with multiple men, much as animals do. What is the tone of the Master Horse's discussion of human women? Is the Master Horse's assessment of human women consistent with other parts of Gulliver's own analyses of women? Do you get the sense that the novel of Gulliver's Travels as a whole supports a poor opinion of women, or do different sections contradict each other?