Question

How does Gulliver characterize soldiers?

Answer 1

The Master Horse wants to know why humans go to war. Gulliver answers: (1) ambition to conquer, (2) corruption of the government, (3) differences of opinion. Wars over opinions are the worst kind.Here, the Master Horse says something really quite tragic: he tells Gulliver that, with all of this warlike nature, it's lucky that humans can't do too much damage to each other because their mouths aren't designed for easy biting.Gulliver explains weapons and the damage that humans can do to each other.The Master Horse stops Gulliver here, and says that he can't hear any more about war because it's too disturbing. Gulliver's tales have only made him hate Yahoos more and more.The Master Horse thinks we don't have reason or rationality at all – we have some other thing that allows us to practice our bad qualities as much as possible.The Master Horse is confused about law: how can laws be bad? How can laws ruin men, when they are designed to save them?Gulliver explains about lawyers, who, he says, are trained from babyhood to defend anything, especially lies, so they have no sense of justice.What's more, judges often prefer to agree with what appears obviously untrue, so people with right on their side may only win if they pretend that right is wrong.Gulliver talks about precedent: anything that has been done before may legally be done again.Lawyers like to split hairs and talk about irrelevant details to distract from the simple facts of all their cases.They have their own private way of speaking, which excludes ordinary people from either understanding or making laws.People in power can decide to convict others accused of crimes against the state because they have influence over the judges.The Master Horse comments that it's a shame that they spend so much time training lawyers to be lawyers and not teaching them to be knowledgeable and wise.