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.'
'That,' said a very young man,
making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar over the lamp; 'that
... very clear indeed.'
'Now, it is very remarkable that
this is so extensively overlooked,' continued the Time Traveller,
with a slight accession of cheerfulness. 'Really this is what is
meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about
the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another
way of looking at Time. There is no difference between Time and any
of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness
moves along it. But some foolish people have got hold of the wrong
side of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say about
this Fourth Dimension?'
'I have not,' said the Provincial
Mayor.
'It is simply this. That Space,
as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three
dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and
is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right
angles to the others. But some philosophical people have been
asking why three dimensions particularly—why not another direction
at right angles to the other three?—and have even tried to
construct a Four-Dimension geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb was
expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month
or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two
dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid,
and similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they
could represent one of four—if they could master the perspective of
the thing. See?'
'I think so,' murmured the
Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows, he lapsed into an
introspective state, his lips moving as one who repeats mystic
words. 'Yes, I think I see it now,' he said after some time,
brightening in a quite transitory manner.
'Well, I do not mind telling you
I have been at work upon this geometry of Four Dimensions for some
time. Some of my results are curious. For instance, here is 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
evidently sections, as it were, Three-Dimensional representations
of his Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and unalterable
thing.
'Scientific people,' proceeded
the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the proper
assimilation of this, 'know very 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, yesterday 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 dimensions of Space
generally recognized? But certainly it traced such a line, and that
line, therefore, we must conclude was 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, and why has it always been,
regarded as something different? And why cannot we move in Time as
we move about in the other dimensions of Space?'
The Time Traveller smiled. 'Are
you 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?
Gravitation limits us there.'
'Not exactly,' said the Medical
Man. 'There are balloons.'
'But before the balloons, save
for spasmodic jumping and the inequalities 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 cannot move at all in
Time, you cannot get away from the present moment.'
'My dear sir, that is just where
you are wrong. That is just where the whole world has gone wrong.
We are always getting away from the present moment. Our mental
existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are
passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the
cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel down if we began our
existence 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 cannot move about in Time.'
'That is the germ of my great
discovery. But you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in
Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go
back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as
you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course we have no means of
staying back for any length of Time, any more than a savage or an
animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilized
man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go up
against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that
ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate 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 show black is white by
argument,' said Filby, 'but you will never convince me.'
'Possibly not,' said the Time
Traveller. 'But now you begin to see the object of my
investigations into the geometry of Four Dimensions. Long ago I had
a vague inkling of a machine—'
'To travel through Time!'
exclaimed the Very Young Man.
'That shall travel indifferently
in any direction of Space and Time, as the driver
determines.'
Filby contented himself with
laughter.
'But I have experimental
verification,' said the Time Traveller.
'It would be remarkably
convenient for the historian,' the Psychologist suggested. 'One
might travel back and verify the accepted account of the Battle of
Hastings, for instance!'
'Don't you think you would
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 would
certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have
improved Greek so much.'
'Then there is the future,' said
the Very Young Man. 'Just think! One might invest all one's money,
leave it to accumulate at interest, and hurry on ahead!'
'To discover a society,' said I,
'erected 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 are 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 round
at us. Then, still smiling faintly, and with his hands deep in his
trousers 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. 'I
wonder what he's got?'
'Some sleight-of-hand trick or
other,' said the Medical Man, and Filby tried to tell us about a
conjurer he had seen at Burslem; but before he had finished his
preface the Time Traveller came back, and Filby's anecdote
collapsed.