I Introduction chapter 1 paragraph 16 among 52 paragraphs
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“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.
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“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.
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“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 recognised?
But certainly it traced such a line, and that line, therefore, we must
conclude, was along the Time-Dimension.”
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“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?”
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The Time Traveller smiled. “Are you so 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.”
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“But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the
inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical
movement.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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 civilised 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?”
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