What do the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms represent? What morals did Swift draw from them? The answer to the second question depends on the solution to the first. One solution could be that the Yahoos represent man as he really is, selfish, sensual and depraved, while the Houyhnhnms symbolize what man should be, altruistic, rational, cultured. In the fourth voyage, Swift presents a case study for opposing states of nature, with the Yahoos representing the thesis that man is governed by his passions, seeking his own advantage, pursuing pleasures and avoiding pain, and the Houyhnhnms which represent the thesis according to which man is governed by reason. If this is the case, then Swift's misanthropy was such that he saw men as the loathsome and disgusting Yahoos, and made it clear that reform of the species was out of the question. One of the main flaws of this theory is that it leaves no room for Gulliver. When attention is drawn to the figure of Gulliver himself, as distinct from his creator, Swift, the moral of the story is considered. If you can't be a Houyhnhnm you don't need to be a Yahoo; just try to be like Gulliver. The problem with this idea is that looking more closely at Gulliver, he is not worth emulating. The final image of him talking to the horses in the stable for four hours a day, unable to bear the company of his own family, makes him look foolish. Another theory is that Gulliver made a mistake in regarding the Houyhnhnms as models to emulate: far from being admirable creatures, they are as repugnant as the Yahoos. Yahoos may be governed by their passions, but these have no human passions at all. From this point of view, Swift was not defending, but attacking reason. The journey also seems to have a slight religious moral. One of Christianity's oldest debates concerns the nature of man after the fall of Adam. He had been so corrupted by that event that, left to his own devices, he was irredeemable. His passions naturally inclined him to vice, and his reason, far from pulling him out of his vicious ways, led him further into error. Only Divine Revelation could bring men back to the straight and narrow path of virtue. Although man is naturally inclined to evil, yet his reason alone could lead him to the knowledge of moral truth.