'To Supplant Reason in Hasty Minds'

In Chap. 5 of “A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms,” Gulliver explains to his hosts the existence of a profession unknown among the intelligent horses: lawyers. They are, he says, “bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose that white is black and black is white, according as they are paid.” Gulliver is indulging in the cheapest and easiest form of humor, the lawyer joke. In his poem “The Answer to ‘Paulus,’” Swift writes: “The lawyer is a common drudge, / To fight our cause before the judge.” But Gulliver goes on to make a more interesting point in his conversation with the Houyhnhnm:

“It is likewise to be observed, that this society has a peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written, which they take special care to multiply; whereby they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong; so that it will take thirty years to decide, whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me, or to a stranger three hundred miles off.”

Swift’s immediate target is lawyers but his aim is more inclusive. We might think of ours as the Age of Cant. Dr. Johnson’s use of the word as reported by Boswell remains the best-known: “My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. . . . You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society: but don't think foolishly.” Cant is distinct from lying. It is empty language used to secure one’s place within a group. The Johnson/Boswell usage is cited in the OED under this definition: “phraseology taken up and used for fashion's sake, without being a genuine expression of sentiment.” Think how once honest, useful words – community, conversation, diversity – have been deflated of meaning and puffed up into badges of right thinking. The Dictionary also cites James Russell Lowell’s use of cant in My Study Windows (1886). Here is the larger context for the passage:  

“Enthusiasm, once cold, can never be warmed over into anything better than cant,-- and phrases, when once the inspiration that filled them with beneficent power has ebbed away, retain only that semblance of meaning which enables them to supplant reason in hasty minds.”