Chapter 4
`In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.
`There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps eight or ten of
these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them addressed me. It came into my
head, oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh and deep for them. So I shook my
head, and, pointing to my ears, shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and
then touched my hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and
shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was nothing in this at al
alarming. Indeed, there was something in these pretty little people that inspired
confidence--a graceful gentleness, a certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked
so frail that I could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen of them about like nine-pins.
But I made a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling at
the Time Machine. Happily then, when it was not too late, I thought of a danger I had
hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the machine I unscrewed the little
levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my pocket. Then I turned again to
see what I could do in the way of communication.
`And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further peculiarities in
their Dresden-china type of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a
sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the
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face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were smal , with bright red,
rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild; and--
this may seem egotism on my part--I fancied even that there was a certain lack of the
interest I might have expected in them.
`As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round me smiling
and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I began the conversation. I pointed to
the Time Machine and to myself. Then hesitating for a moment how to express time, I
pointed to the sun. At once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and white
followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of thunder.
`For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was plain enough.
The question had come into my mind abruptly: were these creatures fools? You may
hardly understand how it took me. You see I had always anticipated that the people of
the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in
knowledge, art, everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that
showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children-- asked
me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I
had suspended upon their clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of
disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I had built the Time
Machine in vain.
`I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of a thunderclap
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as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so and bowed. Then came one laughing
towards me, carrying a chain of beautiful flowers altogether new to me, and put it
about my neck. The idea was received with melodious applause; and presently they
were all running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I
was almost smothered with blossom. You who have never seen the like can scarcely
imagine what delicate and wonderful flowers countless years of culture had created.
Then someone suggested that their plaything should be exhibited in the nearest
building, and so I was led past the sphinx of white marble, which had seemed to watch
me al the while with a smile at my astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted
stone. As I went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a profoundly
grave and intel ectual posterity came, with irresistible merriment, to my mind.
`The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal dimensions. I was
naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of little people, and with the big open
portals that yawned before me shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the
world I saw over their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a
long neglected and yet weedless garden. I saw a number of tall spikes of strange
white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps across the spread of the waxen petals. They
grew scattered, as if wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as I say, I did not
examine them closely at this time. The Time Machine was left deserted on the turf
among the rhododendrons.
`The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not observe the carving
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very narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions of old Phoenician decorations as I
passed through, and it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather- worn.
Several more brightly clad people met me in the doorway, and so we entered, I,
dressed in dingy nineteenth-century garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded
with flowers, and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright, soft-colored robes and
shining white limbs, in a melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech.
`The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with brown. The roof
was in shadow, and the windows, partial y glazed with coloured glass and partially
unglazed, admitted a tempered light. The floor was made up of huge blocks of some
very hard white metal, not plates nor slabs--blocks, and it was so much worn, as I
judged by the going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply channelled along
the more frequented ways. Transverse to the length were innumerable tables made of
slabs of polished stone, raised perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were
heaps of fruits. Some I recognized as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange,
but for the most part they were strange.
`Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions. Upon these my
conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do likewise. With a pretty absence of
ceremony they began to eat the fruit with their hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so
forth, into the round openings in the sides of the tables. I was not loath to follow their
example, for I felt thirsty and hungry. As I did so I surveyed the hal at my leisure.
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`And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look. The stained-glass
windows, which displayed only a geometrical pattern, were broken in many places,
and the curtains that hung across the lower end were thick with dust. And it caught my
eye that the corner of the marble table near me was fractured. Nevertheless, the
general effect was extremely rich and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of
hundred people dining in the hal , and most of them, seated as near to me as they
could come, were watching me with interest, their little eyes shining over the fruit they
were eating. All were clad in the same soft and yet strong, silky material.
`Fruit, by the by, was all their diet. These people of the remote future were strict
vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite of some carnal cravings, I had to be
frugivorous also. Indeed, I found afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had
followed the Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful; one, in
particular, that seemed to be in season all the time I was there--a floury thing in a
three-sided husk --was especially good, and I made it my staple. At first I was puzzled
by al these strange fruits, and by the strange flowers I saw, but later I began to
perceive their import.
`However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future now. So soon as my
appetite was a little checked, I determined to make a resolute attempt to learn the
speech of these new men of mine. Clearly that was the next thing to do. The fruits
seemed a convenient thing to begin upon, and holding one of these up I began a
series of interrogative sounds and gestures. I had some considerable difficulty in
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conveying my meaning. At first my efforts met with a stare of surprise or
inextinguishable laughter, but presently a fair-haired little creature seemed to grasp
my intention and repeated a name. They had to chatter and explain the business at
great length to each other, and my first attempts to make the exquisite little sounds of
their language caused an immense amount of amusement. However, I felt like a
schoolmaster amidst children, and persisted, and presently I had a score of noun
substantives at least at my command; and then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and
even the verb "to eat." But it was slow work, and the little people soon tired and
wanted to get away from my interrogations, so I determined, rather of necessity, to let
them give their lessons in little doses when they felt inclined. And very little doses I
found they were before long, for I never met people more indolent or more easily
fatigued.
`A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was their lack of
interest. They would come to me with eager cries of astonishment, like children, but
like children they would 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 al those who had surrounded me at first were gone. It is 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 continual y meeting more
of these men of the future, who would fol ow me a little distance, chatter and laugh
about me, and, having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly way, leave me again to my
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own devices.
`The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the great hall, and the
scene was 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 had left was situated on the slope of a broad river valley, but the Thames
had shifted perhaps a mile from its present position. I resolved to mount to the summit
of a crest perhaps a mile and a half away, from which 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 was watching for every impression that could possibly help to explain
the condition of ruinous splendour in which I found the world--for ruinous it was. A little
way up the hill, for instance, was a great heap of granite, bound together by masses of
aluminium, a vast labyrinth of precipitous wal s and crumpled heaps, amidst which
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 could not determine. It was
here that I was destined, at a later date, to have a very strange experience--the first
intimation of a still stranger discovery--but of that I wil speak in its proper place.
`Looking round with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I rested for a while, I
realized that there were no small houses to be seen. Apparently the single house, and
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possibly even the household, had vanished. Here and there among the greenery were
palace-like buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form such characteristic
features of our own 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 al 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 had not noticed this before. But everything was so
strange. Now, I saw the fact plainly enough. In costume, and in al the differences of
texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from each other, these people of the
future 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 were living, I felt that this close
resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would expect; for the strength of a
man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the 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
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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. 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
val ey 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
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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.
(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 al , 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--
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gradual y by 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 al
this will be better organized, and stil 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
careful y 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 al
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 al 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. 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, al 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
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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
al iance 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 of al 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 intel igent, 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
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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 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
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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!