Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World

by Jonathan Swift

  CHAPTER II.

  The humours and dispositions of the Laputians described. An account oftheir learning. Of the king and his court. The author's receptionthere. The inhabitants subject to fear and disquietudes. An account ofthe women.

  At my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people, but those whostood nearest seemed to be of better quality. They beheld me with allthe marks and circumstances of wonder; neither indeed was I much in theirdebt, having never till then seen a race of mortals so singular in theirshapes, habits, and countenances. Their heads were all reclined, eitherto the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the otherdirectly up to the zenith. Their outward garments were adorned with thefigures of suns, moons, and stars; interwoven with those of fiddles,flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords, and many otherinstruments of music, unknown to us in Europe. I observed, here andthere, many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder, fastened likea flail to the end of a stick, which they carried in their hands. Ineach bladder was a small quantity of dried peas, or little pebbles, as Iwas afterwards informed. With these bladders, they now and then flappedthe mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice Icould not then conceive the meaning. It seems the minds of these peopleare so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak,nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by someexternal taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason,those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (theoriginal is _climenole_) in their family, as one of their domestics; norever walk abroad, or make visits, without him. And the business of thisofficer is, when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently tostrike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the rightear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This flapperis likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, andupon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is alwaysso wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of fallingdown every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and inthe streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into thekennel.

  It was necessary to give the reader this information, without which hewould be at the same loss with me to understand the proceedings of thesepeople, as they conducted me up the stairs to the top of the island, andfrom thence to the royal palace. While we were ascending, they forgotseveral times what they were about, and left me to myself, till theirmemories were again roused by their flappers; for they appearedaltogether unmoved by the sight of my foreign habit and countenance, andby the shouts of the vulgar, whose thoughts and minds were moredisengaged.

  At last we entered the palace, and proceeded into the chamber ofpresence, where I saw the king seated on his throne, attended on eachside by persons of prime quality. Before the throne, was a large tablefilled with globes and spheres, and mathematical instruments of allkinds. His majesty took not the least notice of us, although ourentrance was not without sufficient noise, by the concourse of allpersons belonging to the court. But he was then deep in a problem; andwe attended at least an hour, before he could solve it. There stood byhim, on each side, a young page with flaps in their hands, and when theysaw he was at leisure, one of them gently struck his mouth, and the otherhis right ear; at which he startled like one awaked on the sudden, andlooking towards me and the company I was in, recollected the occasion ofour coming, whereof he had been informed before. He spoke some words,whereupon immediately a young man with a flap came up to my side, andflapped me gently on the right ear; but I made signs, as well as I could,that I had no occasion for such an instrument; which, as I afterwardsfound, gave his majesty, and the whole court, a very mean opinion of myunderstanding. The king, as far as I could conjecture, asked me severalquestions, and I addressed myself to him in all the languages I had.When it was found I could neither understand nor be understood, I wasconducted by his order to an apartment in his palace (this prince beingdistinguished above all his predecessors for his hospitality tostrangers), where two servants were appointed to attend me. My dinnerwas brought, and four persons of quality, whom I remembered to have seenvery near the king's person, did me the honour to dine with me. We hadtwo courses, of three dishes each. In the first course, there was ashoulder of mutton cut into an equilateral triangle, a piece of beef intoa rhomboides, and a pudding into a cycloid. The second course was twoducks trussed up in the form of fiddles; sausages and puddings resemblingflutes and hautboys, and a breast of veal in the shape of a harp. Theservants cut our bread into cones, cylinders, parallelograms, and severalother mathematical figures.

  While we were at dinner, I made bold to ask the names of several thingsin their language, and those noble persons, by the assistance of theirflappers, delighted to give me answers, hoping to raise my admiration oftheir great abilities if I could be brought to converse with them. I wassoon able to call for bread and drink, or whatever else I wanted.

  After dinner my company withdrew, and a person was sent to me by theking's order, attended by a flapper. He brought with him pen, ink, andpaper, and three or four books, giving me to understand by signs, that hewas sent to teach me the language. We sat together four hours, in whichtime I wrote down a great number of words in columns, with thetranslations over against them; I likewise made a shift to learn severalshort sentences; for my tutor would order one of my servants to fetchsomething, to turn about, to make a bow, to sit, or to stand, or walk,and the like. Then I took down the sentence in writing. He showed mealso, in one of his books, the figures of the sun, moon, and stars, thezodiac, the tropics, and polar circles, together with the denominationsof many plains and solids. He gave me the names and descriptions of allthe musical instruments, and the general terms of art in playing on eachof them. After he had left me, I placed all my words, with theirinterpretations, in alphabetical order. And thus, in a few days, by thehelp of a very faithful memory, I got some insight into their language.The word, which I interpret the flying or floating island, is in theoriginal _Laputa_, whereof I could never learn the true etymology._Lap_, in the old obsolete language, signifies high; and _untuh_, agovernor; from which they say, by corruption, was derived _Laputa_, from_Lapuntuh_. But I do not approve of this derivation, which seems to be alittle strained. I ventured to offer to the learned among them aconjecture of my own, that Laputa was _quasi lap outed_; _lap_,signifying properly, the dancing of the sunbeams in the sea, and _outed_,a wing; which, however, I shall not obtrude, but submit to the judiciousreader.

  Those to whom the king had entrusted me, observing how ill I was clad,ordered a tailor to come next morning, and take measure for a suit ofclothes. This operator did his office after a different manner fromthose of his trade in Europe. He first took my altitude by a quadrant,and then, with a rule and compasses, described the dimensions andoutlines of my whole body, all which he entered upon paper; and in sixdays brought my clothes very ill made, and quite out of shape, byhappening to mistake a figure in the calculation. But my comfort was,that I observed such accidents very frequent, and little regarded.

  During my confinement for want of clothes, and by an indisposition thatheld me some days longer, I much enlarged my dictionary; and when I wentnext to court, was able to understand many things the king spoke, and toreturn him some kind of answers. His majesty had given orders, that theisland should move north-east and by east, to the vertical point overLagado, the metropolis of the whole kingdom below, upon the firm earth.It was about ninety leagues distant, and our voyage lasted four days anda half. I was not in the least sensible of the progressive motion madein the air by the island. On the second morning, about eleven o'clock,the king himself in person, attended by his nobility, courtiers, andofficers, having prepared all their musical instruments, played on themfor three hours without intermission, so that I was quite stunned withthe noise; neither could I possibly guess the meaning, till my tutorinformed me. He said that, the people of their island had their earsadapted to hear "the
music of the spheres, which always played at certainperiods, and the court was now prepared to bear their part, in whateverinstrument they most excelled."

  In our journey towards Lagado, the capital city, his majesty ordered thatthe island should stop over certain towns and villages, from whence hemight receive the petitions of his subjects. And to this purpose,several packthreads were let down, with small weights at the bottom. Onthese packthreads the people strung their petitions, which mounted updirectly, like the scraps of paper fastened by school boys at the end ofthe string that holds their kite. Sometimes we received wine andvictuals from below, which were drawn up by pulleys.

  The knowledge I had in mathematics, gave me great assistance in acquiringtheir phraseology, which depended much upon that science, and music; andin the latter I was not unskilled. Their ideas are perpetuallyconversant in lines and figures. If they would, for example, praise thebeauty of a woman, or any other animal, they describe it by rhombs,circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other geometrical terms, or bywords of art drawn from music, needless here to repeat. I observed inthe king's kitchen all sorts of mathematical and musical instruments,after the figures of which they cut up the joints that were served to hismajesty's table.

  Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevil, without one right anglein any apartment; and this defect arises from the contempt they bear topractical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and mechanic; thoseinstructions they give being too refined for the intellects of theirworkmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes. And although they aredexterous enough upon a piece of paper, in the management of the rule,the pencil, and the divider, yet in the common actions and behaviour oflife, I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people, nor soslow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all other subjects, exceptthose of mathematics and music. They are very bad reasoners, andvehemently given to opposition, unless when they happen to be of theright opinion, which is seldom their case. Imagination, fancy, andinvention, they are wholly strangers to, nor have any words in theirlanguage, by which those ideas can be expressed; the whole compass oftheir thoughts and mind being shut up within the two forementionedsciences.

  Most of them, and especially those who deal in the astronomical part,have great faith in judicial astrology, although they are ashamed to ownit publicly. But what I chiefly admired, and thought altogetherunaccountable, was the strong disposition I observed in them towards newsand politics, perpetually inquiring into public affairs, giving theirjudgments in matters of state, and passionately disputing every inch of aparty opinion. I have indeed observed the same disposition among most ofthe mathematicians I have known in Europe, although I could neverdiscover the least analogy between the two sciences; unless those peoplesuppose, that because the smallest circle has as many degrees as thelargest, therefore the regulation and management of the world require nomore abilities than the handling and turning of a globe; but I rathertake this quality to spring from a very common infirmity of human nature,inclining us to be most curious and conceited in matters where we haveleast concern, and for which we are least adapted by study or nature.

  These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minutespeace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes which verylittle affect the rest of mortals. Their apprehensions arise fromseveral changes they dread in the celestial bodies: for instance, thatthe earth, by the continual approaches of the sun towards it, must, incourse of time, be absorbed, or swallowed up; that the face of the sun,will, by degrees, be encrusted with its own effluvia, and give no morelight to the world; that the earth very narrowly escaped a brush from thetail of the last comet, which would have infallibly reduced it to ashes;and that the next, which they have calculated for one-and-thirty yearshence, will probably destroy us. For if, in its perihelion, it shouldapproach within a certain degree of the sun (as by their calculationsthey have reason to dread) it will receive a degree of heat ten thousandtimes more intense than that of red hot glowing iron, and in its absencefrom the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and fourteenmiles long, through which, if the earth should pass at the distance ofone hundred thousand miles from the nucleus, or main body of the comet,it must in its passage be set on fire, and reduced to ashes: that thesun, daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply them, willat last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be attended withthe destruction of this earth, and of all the planets that receive theirlight from it.

  They are so perpetually alarmed with the apprehensions of these, and thelike impending dangers, that they can neither sleep quietly in theirbeds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures and amusements oflife. When they meet an acquaintance in the morning, the first questionis about the sun's health, how he looked at his setting and rising, andwhat hopes they have to avoid the stroke of the approaching comet. Thisconversation they are apt to run into with the same temper that boysdiscover in delighting to hear terrible stories of spirits andhobgoblins, which they greedily listen to, and dare not go to bed forfear.

  The women of the island have abundance of vivacity: they, contemn theirhusbands, and are exceedingly fond of strangers, whereof there is alwaysa considerable number from the continent below, attending at court,either upon affairs of the several towns and corporations, or their ownparticular occasions, but are much despised, because they want the sameendowments. Among these the ladies choose their gallants: but thevexation is, that they act with too much ease and security; for thehusband is always so rapt in speculation, that the mistress and lover mayproceed to the greatest familiarities before his face, if he be butprovided with paper and implements, and without his flapper at his side.

  The wives and daughters lament their confinement to the island, althoughI think it the most delicious spot of ground in the world; and althoughthey live here in the greatest plenty and magnificence, and are allowedto do whatever they please, they long to see the world, and take thediversions of the metropolis, which they are not allowed to do without aparticular license from the king; and this is not easy to be obtained,because the people of quality have found, by frequent experience, howhard it is to persuade their women to return from below. I was told thata great court lady, who had several children,--is married to the primeminister, the richest subject in the kingdom, a very graceful person,extremely fond of her, and lives in the finest palace of theisland,--went down to Lagado on the pretence of health, there hid herselffor several months, till the king sent a warrant to search for her; andshe was found in an obscure eating-house all in rags, having pawned herclothes to maintain an old deformed footman, who beat her every day, andin whose company she was taken, much against her will. And although herhusband received her with all possible kindness, and without the leastreproach, she soon after contrived to steal down again, with all herjewels, to the same gallant, and has not been heard of since.

  This may perhaps pass with the reader rather for an European or Englishstory, than for one of a country so remote. But he may please toconsider, that the caprices of womankind are not limited by any climateor nation, and that they are much more uniform, than can be easilyimagined.

  In about a month's time, I had made a tolerable proficiency in theirlanguage, and was able to answer most of the king's questions, when I hadthe honour to attend him. His majesty discovered not the least curiosityto inquire into the laws, government, history, religion, or manners ofthe countries where I had been; but confined his questions to the stateof mathematics, and received the account I gave him with great contemptand indifference, though often roused by his flapper on each side.