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The Time Machine
Chapter 6. The Sunset of Mankind
"A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was their lack of interest".
They'd come to me with eager cries of astonishment, like children, but, like children they'd soon stop examining me, and wander away after some other toy.
The dinner and my conversational beginnings ended, I noted for the first time that almost all those who had surrounded me at first were gone.
It's odd, too, how speedily I came to disregard these little people.
I went out through the portal into the sunlit world again as soon as my hunger was satisfied.
I was continually meeting more of these men of the future.
They'd follow me a little distance, chatter and laugh about me, smile and gesticulate in a friendly way.
Then leave me again to my own devices.
Evening calm had fallen as I left the great hall, the scene lit by the warm glow of the setting sun.
At first things were very confusing, Everything was so entirely different from the world I had known, even the flowers.
The big building I left stood on the slope of a river valley, but the Thames had shifted a mile from its position.
I resolved to mount to the summit of a crest perhaps a mile and a half away.
From there I could get a wider view of this our planet in the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One A.D.
For that, I should explain, was the date the little dials of my machine recorded.
As I walked I watched for impressions that might explain the ruinous splendour in which I found the world.
A little way up the hill, for instance, was a great heap of granite, bound together by masses of aluminium.
It formed a vast labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumpled heaps.
Amidst them were thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like plants, nettles possibly, but wonderfully tinted with brown about the leaves, and incapable of stinging.
It was evidently the derelict remains of some vast structure, to what end built I couldn't determine.
It was here that I was destined, at a later date, to have a very strange experience.
That experience was the first intimation of a still stranger discovery, but I will speak of it in its proper place.
Looking round from a terrace where I rested, I realised there were no small houses to be seen.
Apparently the single house, and possibly even the household, had vanished.
Here and there among the greenery stood palace-like buildings, but the house and the cottage, characteristic features of our English landscape, had disappeared.
"Communism," said I to myself.
And on the heels of that came another thought.
I looked at the half-dozen little figures that were following me.
Then, in a flash, I perceived that all had the same form of costume, the same soft hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb.
It may seem strange, perhaps, that I hadn't noticed this before.
But everything was so strange, Now, I saw the fact plainly enough.
In costume and in the differences of texture and bearing that mark the sexes, these future people were alike.
And the children seemed to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their parents.
I judged then that the children of that time were extremely precocious, physically at least.
And I found afterwards abundant verification of my opinion.
Seeing the ease and security in which these people lived, I felt this close resemblance of the sexes was what one would expect.
Manly strength and womanly softness, and the family, were necessities in times of physical force.
Differentiation of occupations was also a militant necessity then.
Where population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State.
Where violence is rare and offspring are secure, there is less necessity, indeed no necessity, for an efficient family.
The specialisation of the sexes with reference to their children's needs then disappears.
We see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this future age it was complete.
This, I must remind you, was my speculation at the time.
Later, I was to appreciate how far it fell short of the reality.
While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by a pretty little structure, like a well under a cupola.
I thought in a transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then resumed the thread of my speculations.
There were no large buildings near the hilltop, and because my walking powers were miraculous, I was soon left alone.
With a strange sense of freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest.
There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I didn't recognise.
It was corroded in places with pinkish rust and smothered in moss, arm-rests were cast and filed into the resemblance of griffins' heads.
I sat down on it, and I surveyed the broad view of our old world under the sunset of that long day.
It was as sweet and fair a view as I have ever seen.
The sun had already gone below the horizon and the west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal bars of purple and crimson.
Below was the valley of the Thames, in which the river lay like a band of burnished steel.
I have already spoken of the great palaces dotted about among the variegated greenery, some in ruins and some still occupied.
Here and there rose a white or silvery figure in the waste garden of the earth, here.
There came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or obelisk.
There were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidences of agriculture, the whole earth had become a garden.
So watching, I began to form an interpretation of what I had seen, that evening it took this shape.
Afterwards I found I had got only a half truth, or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.
It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane.
The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind.
For the first time I began to realise an odd consequence of the social effort in which we're at present engaged.
And yet, come to think, it's a logical consequence enough.
Strength is the outcome of need, Security sets a premium on feebleness.
The work of ameliorating the conditions of life, the true civilising process that makes life more and more secure, had gone steadily on to a climax.
One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another.
Things that are now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward.
And the harvest was what I saw!
After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of today are still in the rudimentary stage.
The science of our time has attacked only a small part of human disease, yet it extends its work steadily and persistently.
Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here.
There and cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they can.
We improve our favourite plants and animals, and how few they're, gradually by selective breeding.
One season brings a new and better peach, another brings a seedless grape.
We raise a sweeter and larger flower.
We develop a more convenient breed of cattle.
We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague, our knowledge limited, and Nature is shy and slow in our clumsy hands.
Some day all this will be better organised, and still better.
That's the drift of the current in spite of the eddies.
The whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co-operating, things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature.
In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit our human needs.
This adjustment, I say, must have been done well, indeed for all Time, in the span my machine had leapt.
The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi, everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers, brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither.
The ideal of preventive medicine was attained.
Diseases had been stamped out, I saw no evidence of any contagious diseases during all my stay.
And I shall have to tell you later that even the processes of putrefaction and decay had been profoundly affected by these changes.
Social triumphs, too, had been effected, and I saw clear signs of human comfort.
I saw mankind housed in splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them engaged in no toil.
There were no signs of struggle, neither social nor economical struggle.
The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone.
It was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a social paradise.
The difficulty of increasing population had been met, I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.
But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to the change.
What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour?
Hardship and freedom are the conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive while the weaker go to the wall.
These conditions put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men, and upon self-restraint, patience, and decision.
And the institution of the family and the emotions that arise therein, fierce jealousy, tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion, were justified.
They found support in the imminent dangers that threatened the young.
Now, where are these imminent dangers that once lurked about our homes and fields?
There's a sentiment arising, and it'll grow, against connubial jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion of all sorts.
These are now unnecessary things, and things that make us uncomfortable.
They're savage survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant life.
I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of intelligence, and those big abundant ruins.
And it strengthened my belief in a perfect conquest of Nature, For after the battle comes Quiet.
Humanity had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which it lived.
And now came the reaction of the altered conditions.
Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness.
Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to survival, are a constant source of failure.
Physical courage and the love of battle, for instance, are no great help, may even be hindrances, to a civilised man.
And in a state of physical balance and security, power, intellectual as well as physical, would be out of place.
For countless years I judged there had been no danger of war or solitary violence.
I also believed there was no wasting disease to require strength of constitution and no need of toil.
For such a life, what we should call the weak are as well equipped as the strong, are indeed no longer weak.
Better equipped indeed they're, for the strong would be fretted by an energy for which there was no outlet.
No doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw was the outcome of the last surgings of the now purposeless energy of mankind.
It was the flourish of that triumph that began the last great peace before mankind settled into harmony with its conditions.
This has ever been the fate of energy in security, it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor and decay.
Even this artistic impetus would at last die away, had almost died in the Time I saw.
To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to sing in the sunlight, so much was left of the artistic spirit, and no more.
Even that would fade in the end into a contented inactivity.
We're kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.
And it seemed to me that here was that hateful grindstone broken at last!
As I stood there in the gathering dark, I thought that I had mastered the problem of the world with this simple explanation.
I believed I had also mastered the whole secret of these delicious people.
Possibly the checks they had devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well, and their numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary.
That would account for the abandoned ruins.
Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough, as most wrong theories are!