family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere
militant necessities of an age of physical force; where
population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing
becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State; where
violence comes but rarely and off-spring are secure, there
is less necessity—indeed there is no necessity—for an
efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with
reference to their children’s needs 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 towards the
top of the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently
miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time. The Time Machine
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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 did
not recognize, corroded in places with a kind of pinkish
rust and half smothered in soft moss, the arm-rests 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 and 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 put my interpretation upon
the things I had seen, and as it shaped itself to me that
evening, my interpretation was something in this way. The Time Machine
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(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 realize an
odd consequence of the social effort in which we are at
present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is 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 civilizing
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 to-day
are still in the rudimentary stage. The science of our time
has attacked but a little department of the field of human
disease, but even so, it spreads its operations very steadily
and persistently. Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a
weed just here and 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 are—gradually by The Time Machine
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selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a
seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a
more convenient breed of cattle. We improve them
gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and
our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy
and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be
better organized, and still better. That is 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 me to suit our human needs.
‘This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done
well; done indeed for all Time, in the space of Time across
which my machine had leaped. 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. The Time Machine
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‘Social triumphs, too, had been effected. 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: conditions under which
the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to
the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal
alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and
decision. And the institution of the family, and the
emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the
tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion, all found
their justification and support in the imminent dangers of
the young. NOW, where are these imminent dangers?
There is a sentiment arising, and it will grow, against
connubial jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion The Time Machine
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of all sorts; unnecessary things now, and things that make
us uncomfortable, 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 civilized 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, no danger
from wild beasts, no wasting disease to require strength of
constitution, no need of toil. For such a life, what we
should call the weak are as well equipped as the strong, are The Time Machine
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indeed no longer weak. Better equipped indeed they are,
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 before it settled down
into perfect harmony with the conditions under which it
lived—the flourish of that triumph which began the last
great peace. 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 are 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 in
this simple explanation I had mastered the problem of the
world— 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 The Time Machine
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my explanation, and plausible enough—as most wrong
theories are! The Time Machine
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V
‘As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph
of man, the full moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out
of an overflow of silver light in the north-east. The bright
little figures ceased to move about below, a noiseless owl
flitted by, and I shivered with the chill of the night. I
determined to descend and find where I could sleep.
‘I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye
travelled along to the figure of the White Sphinx upon the
pedestal of bronze, growing distinct as the light of the
rising moon grew brighter. I could see the silver birch
against it. There was the tangle of rhododendron bushes,
black in the pale light, and there was the little lawn. I
looked at the lawn again. A queer doubt chilled my
complacency. ‘No,’ said I stoutly to myself, ‘that was not
the lawn.’
‘But it WAS the lawn. For the white leprous face of
the sphinx was towards it. Can you imagine what I felt as
this conviction came home to me? But you cannot. The
Time Machine was gone!
‘At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility
of losing my own age, of being left helpless in this strange The Time Machine
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new world. The bare thought of it was an actual physical
sensation. I could feel it grip me at the throat and stop my
breathing. In another moment I was in a passion of fear
and running with great leaping strides down the slope.
Once I fell headlong and cut my face; I lost no time in
stanching the blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a
warm trickle down my cheek and chin. All the time I ran
I was saying to myself: ‘They have moved it a little,
pushed it under the bushes out of the way.’ Nevertheless, I
ran with all my might. All the time, with the certainty that
sometimes comes with excessive dread, I knew that such
assurance was folly, knew instinctively that the machine
was removed out of my reach. My breath came with pain.
I suppose I covered the whole distance from the hill crest
to the little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes. And I
am not a young man. I cursed aloud, as I ran, at my
confident folly in leaving the machine, wasting good
breath thereby. I cried aloud, and none answered. Not a
creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit world.
‘When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realized.
Not a trace of the thing was to be seen. I felt faint and
cold when I faced the empty space among the black tangle
of bushes. I ran round it furiously, as if the thing might be
hidden in a corner, and then stopped abruptly, with my The Time Machine
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hands clutching my hair. Above me towered the sphinx,
upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in the
light of the rising moon. It seemed to smile in mockery of
my dismay.
‘I might have consoled myself by imagining the little
people had put the mechanism in some shelter for me, had
I not felt assured of their physical and intellectual
inadequacy. That is what dismayed me: the sense of some
hitherto unsuspected power, through whose intervention
my invention had vanished. Yet, for one thing I felt
assured: unless some other age had produced its exact
duplicate, the machine could not have moved in time.
The attachment of the levers—I will show you the
method later— prevented any one from tampering with it
in that way when they were removed. It had moved, and
was hid, only in space. But then, where could it be?
‘I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember
running violently in and out among the moonlit bushes all
round the sphinx, and startling some white animal that, in
the dim light, I took for a small deer. I remember, too,
late that night, beating the bushes with my clenched fist
until my knuckles were gashed and bleeding from the
broken twigs. Then, sobbing and raving in my anguish of
mind, I went down to the great building of stone. The big The Time Machine
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hall was dark, silent, and deserted. I slipped on the uneven
floor, and fell over one of the malachite tables, almost
breaking my shin. I lit a match and went on past the dusty
curtains, of which I have told you.
‘There I found a second great hall covered with
cushions, upon which, perhaps, a score or so of the little
people were sleeping. I have no doubt they found my
second appearance strange enough, coming suddenly out
of the quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and the
splutter and flare of a match. For they had forgotten about
matches. ‘Where is my Time Machine?’ I began, bawling
like an angry child, laying hands upon them and shaking
