Author: H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
Release Date: October 2, 2004 [EBook #35]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of this project gutenberg
EBOOK the time machine ***
The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells [1898]
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to
speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to
us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his
usually pale face was flushed and animated. The
fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the
incandescent lights in the lilies of silver 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 luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought
roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision.
And he put it to us in this way—marking
the points with a lean forefinger—as we
sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new
paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity.
’You must follow me carefully. I shall
have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost
universally accepted. The geometry, for instance,
they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.’
‘Is not that rather a large thing to expect
us to begin upon?’ said Filby, an argumentative
person with red hair.
’I do not mean to ask you to accept anything
without reasonable ground for it. You will soon
admit as much as I need from you. You know of
course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness
nil, has no real existence. They taught
you that? Neither has a mathematical plane.
These things are mere abstractions.’
‘That is all right,’ 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?’
‘Don’t follow you,’ said Filby.
’Can a cube that does not last for any time
at all, have a real existence?’
Filby became pensive. ‘Clearly,’
the Time Traveller proceeded, ’any real body
must have extension in four directions:
it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration.
But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which
I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook
this fact. There are really four dimensions,
three which we call the three planes of Space, and
a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency
to draw an unreal distinction between the former three
dimensions and the latter, because it happens that
our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction
along the latter from the beginning to the end of
our lives.’
