The Time Machine
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 hall
at my leisure.
“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 hall, 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 bye, 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 all 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 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 genuine, if uncivil, 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.
VI.
The Sunset of Mankind
“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
all 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 continually meeting more of these men of the future,
who would follow me a little distance, chatter and laugh about me, and,
having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly way, leave me again to my
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 walls 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 will speak in
its proper place.
“Looking round, with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I rested
for a while, I realised that 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 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 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 had not noticed this before. But everything was so
strange. Now, I saw the fact plainly enough. In costume, and in all 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 offspring
are secure, there is less necessity—indeed there is no necessity—for an
efficient family, and the specialisation 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 recognise,
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. (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 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 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 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 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 organised, 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 life 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
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. I saw mankind housed in
splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them