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The Time Machine
Chapter 1. Introduction
The Time Traveller, for that'll be convenient to say, was explaining a difficult matter to us.
His pale grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and excited.
The fire burned brightly, and the soft light of the electric lamps in the silver lilies caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses.
Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon.
And there was that comfortable after-dinner atmosphere, when thought runs free of the trammels of precision.
He put it to us in this way, marking the points with a thin forefinger.
We sat and lazily admired his seriousness over this new paradox and his fertility of ideas.
"You must follow me carefully."
"I'll have to challenge one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted."
"The geometry, for example, they taught you at school is based on a mistake."
"Isn't that rather a large thing to expect us to begin on?" said Filby, an argumentative man with red hair.
"I don't mean to ask you to accept anything without a good reason."
"You'll soon admit as much as I need from you."
"You know of course that a mathematical line, a line with no thickness, has no real existence."
"They taught you that?"
"Neither has a mathematical plane."
"These things are mere ideas."
"That's fine," said the Psychologist.
"Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence."
"There I object," said Filby.
"Of course a solid body may exist. All real things, "
"So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?"
"I don't follow you," said Filby.
"Can a cube that doesn't last for any time at all have a real existence?"
Filby became thoughtful, staring into the fire as he pondered the Time Traveller's words.
"Clearly," the Time Traveller went on, "any real body must have extension in four directions".
It must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and Duration.
But because of a natural weakness of the body, which I'll explain in a moment, we tend to overlook this fact.
There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.
There's, however, a tendency to make an unreal difference between the first three dimensions and the fourth.
This happens because our consciousness moves step by step in one direction along the fourth from the beginning to the end of our lives.
"That," said a very young man, making sudden efforts to relight his cigar over the lamp, "that's very clear indeed."
"Now, it's very strange that this is so widely overlooked," continued the Time Traveller, with a slight increase of cheerfulness.
"Really this is what's meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension don't know they mean it."
"It's only another way of looking at Time."
"There's no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it."
"But some foolish people have taken the wrong side of that idea."
"You have all heard what they say about this Fourth Dimension?"
"I haven't," said the Provincial Mayor.
"It's simply this."
"Space, as mathematicians describe it, has three dimensions called Length, Breadth, and Thickness."
"It is definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others."
"But some philosophers ask why three dimensions in particular, and why not another direction at right angles to the other three?"
"They have even tried to construct a Four-Dimensional geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb explained this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago."
"On a flat surface with two dimensions we can draw a three-dimensional solid, likewise, three-dimensional models might represent a four-dimensional object if we knew the perspective. See"?
"I think so," murmured the Provincial Mayor.
He knitted his brows and fell into a quiet state, his lips moving as one who repeats strange words.
"Yes, I think I see it now," he said after some time, brightening in a short way.
"Well, I don't mind telling you I have been working on this geometry of Four Dimensions for some time".
Some of my results are curious, I have found, and may surprise you.
For example, here's a portrait of a man at eight years old, another at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at twenty-three, and so on.
All these are clearly sections, as it were, Three-Dimensional representations of his Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and unchangeable thing.
"Scientific people," the Time Traveller went on after a pause, "know well that Time is only a kind of Space."
"Here is a popular scientific diagram, a weather record, this line I trace with my finger shows the movement of the barometer."
"Yesterday it was so high, last night it fell, then this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to here."
"Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the commonly recognised Space dimensions, but it traced such a line along the Time-Dimension."
"But," said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire.
"If Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it thought to be something different"?
And why has it always been thought so?" And why can't we move in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?"
The Time Traveller smiled, a slow, knowing smile playing about his pale lips.
"Are you so sure we can move freely in Space?"
"Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough, and men always have done so."
"I admit we move freely in two dimensions."
"But how about up and down?"
"Gravity limits us there."
"Not exactly," said the Medical Man.
"There are balloons."
"But before the balloons, apart from sudden jumping and the roughness of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical movement."
"Still they could move a little up and down," said the Medical Man.
"Easier, far easier down than up."
"And you can't move at all in Time, you can't get away from the present moment."
"My dear sir, that's just where you're wrong."
"That's just where the whole world has gone wrong."
"We're always getting away from the present moment."
"Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are moving along the Time-Dimension with a steady speed from the cradle to the grave."
"Just as we'd travel down if we began our life fifty miles above the earth's surface."
"But the great difficulty is this," interrupted the Psychologist.
"You can move about in all directions of Space, but you can't move about in Time."
"That's the seed of my great discovery".
But you're wrong to say that we can't move about in Time.
For instance, if I'm remembering an incident very clearly I go back to the instant of its happening.
I become absent-minded, as you say, I jump back for a moment.
We cannot stay back for long in Time, any more than a savage or animal can stay six feet above the ground.
But a civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect.
"He can go up against gravity in a balloon".
"Why should he not hope that eventually he may be able to stop or speed up his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?"
"Oh, this," began Filby, "is all, "
"Why not?" said the Time Traveller.
"It's against reason," said Filby.
"What reason?" said the Time Traveller.
"You can argue that black is white," said Filby, "but you'll never convince me."
"Possibly not," said the Time Traveller.
"But now you begin to see the purpose of my investigations into the geometry of Four Dimensions. Long ago I had a vague idea of a machine, "
"To travel through Time!" cried the Very Young Man.
"That'll travel equally in any direction of Space and Time, as the driver chooses."
Filby contented himself with laughter, giving a short, scornful chuckle and shaking his head.
"But I have experimental proof," said the Time Traveller.
"It would be remarkably convenient for the historian," the Psychologist suggested.
"One might travel back and check the accepted account of the Battle of Hastings, for example."
"Don't you think you'd attract attention?" said the Medical Man.
"Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms."
"One might get one's Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato," the Very Young Man thought.
"In which case they'd certainly fail you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much."
"Then there's the future," said the Very Young Man.
"Just think. One might invest all one's money, leave it to grow at interest, and hurry on ahead."
"To discover a society," said I, "built on a strictly communistic basis."
"Of all the wild extravagant theories!" began the Psychologist.
"Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until, "
"Experimental verification!" cried I.
"You're going to verify that?"
"The experiment!" cried Filby, who was getting brain-weary.
"Let's see your experiment anyhow," said the Psychologist, "though it's all humbug, you know."
The Time Traveller smiled at us, a faint knowing smile that reassured everyone.
Then, still smiling faintly, and with his hands deep in his trouser pockets, he walked slowly out of the room.
And we heard his slippers shuffling down the long passage to his laboratory.
The Psychologist looked at us, eyes full of puzzled curiosity and faint amusement.
"I wonder what he's got?"
"Some sleight-of-hand trick or other," said the Medical Man.
Filby tried to tell us about a conjuror he had seen at Burslem, but before he had finished his story the Time Traveller came back.
Filby's anecdote fell apart as the room filled with the Time Traveller's return.