Gulliver?s travels take him to Lilliput, an island on a miniature scale where he appears as huge as a giant; Brobdingnag, where everything and everyone is enormous, and Gulliver is comparatively minuscule; the flying island of Laputa, inhabited by philosophers; the kingdom of Balnibarbi, full of obsessive scientists; the island of Glubbdubdrib, where a magician enables him to speak with the ghosts of important figures from antiquity and the modern world; Luggnagg, where he meets the immortal (and deeply unhappy) Struldbrugs; and finally the Country of the Houyhnhnms, a race of highly intelligent, refined talking horses, who rule over a brutish race of humanoid beasts known as Yahoos. Gulliver is so depressed by humanity?s resemblance to the Yahoos that after he returns home from his final voyage he becomes a recluse. Barely able to go near his own wife and family, he is convinced that human beings are nothing more than ?a lump of deformity and diseases both in body and mind, smitten with pride?.