I Introduction chapter 1 paragraph 27 among 52 paragraphs
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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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