Swift's story is meant to divert Hobbes and other opponents of the church and government from pointing out their flaws. But, unlike in his subsequent works, Swift was obsessed with maintaining his authorship of the story's obscurity. Thus, he resorted to criticizing himself and his contemporaries in the process. In the first place, he took issue with the idea that humanity's depravity required an institution like the Church to restrain it. Such a notion was popular at the time, especially among philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes who argued that human nature was bad by definition and needed the civilizing influence of religion or society to prevent people from behaving badly. For example, when one considers how many people would commit atrocities if not for the fear of punishment, it makes sense that humanity needs laws and governments to keep them in line. But this explanation wasn't enough for Swift, who believed that most people wouldn't be so vicious unless they were also greedy and selfish. To prove his point, he wrote a short novel called "Gulliver's Travels" that criticized these same ideas and others like them. In it, Gulliver travels around the world and experiences things that show that humanity's nature isn't really that bad. For example, he sees that some countries have governments that are even worse than what would happen without any rules at all, so there must be something else that prevents people from acting violently.