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How does Gulliver’s admiration for the Houyhnhnms become an imbalance?

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Illustration of Lemuel Gulliver lying on the ground, tied down by tiny Lilliputians, with crowds and small buildings in the background, from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. — Gulliver’s Travels Lemuel Gulliver in Lilliput, illustration from an edition of Jonathan Swift's *Gulliver's Travels*.

In the final book of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Lemuel Gulliver’s admiration for the Houyhnhnms—a race of rational, virtuous horses—leads to a profound psychological imbalance.123

While the Houyhnhnms represent the epitome of reason and simplicity, Gulliver’s experience with them causes him to develop a deep, misanthropic disdain for his own species. Upon returning to England, his inability to reconcile the perfect rationality he witnessed with the flawed nature of humanity manifests in his rejection of his own family and society.231

Gulliver’s descent into imbalance is marked by his "proud identification" with the horses and his refusal to associate with other humans, whom he views as nothing more than Yahoos—the brutish, greedy race he encountered on the island. Ultimately, his behavior suggests that while the Houyhnhnms serve as an ideal, human beings are fundamentally incapable of achieving that level of pure, virtuous rationality, and Gulliver’s attempt to do so leaves him alienated and detached from reality.123