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Artworks
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Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels describes the land of the houyhnhnms- an imaginary breed of horses with human-like intelligence. According to the edifying philosophy offered by Swift, “these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature.” Their main virtues are friendship and good will toward all of their kind. “They will have it that nature teaches them to love the whole species, and it is reason only that makes a distinction of persons, where there is a superior degree of virtue.”
An image of two animals in love, strolling down a tree-lined path, in the fall, is an allegory of human moral values. In that gentle nuzzle, we see mutual love and devotion. Ad they trot away their step ring with the imperative of abandoning our selfishness. In a way, it is a symbol of the progress made by a human being on the road to becoming a social animal.