I Introduction chapter 1 paragraph 24 among 52 paragraphs
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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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“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—”
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“That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and
Time, as the driver determines.”
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“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!”
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“Don’t you think you would attract attention?” said
the Medical Man. “Our ancestors had no great tolerance for
anachronisms.”
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“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and
Plato,” the Very Young Man thought.
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“In which case they would certainly plough you for the
Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”
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