The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells read online

III

‘I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time

Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the

workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of

the ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of

it’s sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday, but on Friday,

when the putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the

nickel bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I had to get

remade; so that the thing was not complete until this morning. It

was at ten o’clock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began

its career. I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put

one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the

saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels

much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I took

the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other,

pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed to

reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round,

I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened? For

a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted

the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute

or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past three!

‘I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both

hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went

dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing

me, towards the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to

traverse the place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room

like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The

night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment

came to-morrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter

and ever fainter. To-morrow night came black, then day again, night

again, day again, faster and faster still. An eddying murmur filled

my ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind.

‘I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time

travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling

exactly like that one has upon a switchback–of a helpless headlong

motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent

smash. As I put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a

black wing. The dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to

fall away from me, and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky,

leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. I supposed

the laboratory had been destroyed and I had come into the open air.

I had a dim impression of scaffolding, but I was already going too

fast to be conscious of any moving things. The slowest snail that

ever crawled dashed by too fast for me. The twinkling succession of

darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. Then, in the

intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her

quarters from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the circling

stars. Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the

palpitation of night and day merged into one continuous greyness;

the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous

color like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak

of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating

band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a

brighter circle flickering in the blue.

‘The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hill-side

upon which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose above me

grey and dim. I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour,

now brown, now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away.

I saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams.

The whole surface of the earth seemed changed–melting and flowing

under my eyes. The little hands upon the dials that registered my

speed raced round faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun

belt swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or

less, and that consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and

minute by minute the white snow flashed across the world, and

vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring.

‘The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They

merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked

indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to

account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a

kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At

first I scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but

these new sensations. But presently a fresh series of impressions

grew up in my mind–a certain curiosity and therewith a certain

dread–until at last they took complete possession of me. What

strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our

rudimentary civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to

look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated

before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising about

me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it

seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up the

hill-side, and remain there, without any wintry intermission. Even

through the veil of my confusion the earth seemed very fair. And so

my mind came round to the business of stopping.

‘The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some

substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long

as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely

mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated–was slipping like a vapour

through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to

a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into

whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate

contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical

reaction–possibly a far-reaching explosion–would result, and blow

myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions–into the

Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I

was making the machine; but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an

unavoidable risk–one of the risks a man has got to take! Now the

risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the same cheerful light.

The fact is that, insensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything,

the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the

feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely upset my nerve. I told

myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of petulance I

resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged over

the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over, and I was

flung headlong through the air.

‘There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have

been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me,

and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine.

Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the

confusion in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was on what

seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron

bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple blossoms were

dropping in a shower under the beating of the hail-stones. The

rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove

along the ground like smoke. In a moment I was wet to the skin.

“Fine hospitality,” said I, “to a man who has travelled innumerable

years to see you.”

‘Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and

looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white

stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy

downpour. But all else of the world was invisible.

‘My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail

grew thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very

large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white

marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings,

instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so

that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of

bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that the face was

towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the

faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn,

and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I stood

looking at it for a little space–half a minute, perhaps, or half an

hour. It seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove before it

denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from it for a moment and

saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the sky was

lightening with the promise of the sun.

‘I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full

temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when

that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have

happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion?

What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had

developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly

powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more

dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness–a foul creature to

be incontinently slain.

‘Already I saw other vast shapes–huge buildings with intricate

parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping

in upon me through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic

fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to

readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the sun smote through the

thunderstorm. The grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like

the trailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in the intense blue

of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into

nothingness. The great buildings about me stood out clear and

distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out

in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along their courses. I

felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in

the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear

grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again

grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave under

my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One

hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily

in attitude to mount again.

‘But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I

looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote

future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer

house, I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had

seen me, and their faces were directed towards me.

‘Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by

the White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of

these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon

which I stood with my machine. He was a slight creature–perhaps

four feet high–clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a

leather belt. Sandals or buskins–I could not clearly distinguish

which–were on his feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his

head was bare. Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm

the air was.

‘He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but

indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more

beautiful kind of consumptive–that hectic beauty of which we used

to hear so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence.

I took my hands from the machine.

IV

‘In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile

thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my

eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at

once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him and

spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.

‘There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps

eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them

addressed me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was

too harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and, pointing to my

ears, shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then

touched my hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my

back and shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was

nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was something in

these pretty little people that inspired confidence–a graceful

gentleness, a certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so

frail that I could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen of them

about like nine-pins. But I made a sudden motion to warn them when I

saw their little pink hands feeling at the Time Machine. Happily

then, when it was not too late, I thought of a danger I had hitherto

forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the machine I unscrewed the

little levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my

pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in the way of

communication.

‘And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some

further peculiarities in their Dresden-china type of prettiness.

Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the

neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the

face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small,

with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a

point. The eyes were large and mild; and–this may seem egotism on

my part–I fancied even that there was a certain lack of the

interest I might have expected in them.

‘As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood

round me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I

began the conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself.

Then hesitating for a moment how to express time, I pointed to the

sun. At once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and

white followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the

sound of thunder.

‘For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was

plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly: were

these creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me.

You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight

Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in

knowledge, art, everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a

question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of

our five-year-old children–asked me, in fact, if I had come from

the sun in a thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended

upon their clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features.

A flow of disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt

that I had built the Time Machine in vain.

‘I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering

of a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so

and bowed. Then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of

beautiful flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck.

The idea was received with melodious applause; and presently they

were all running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging

them upon me until I was almost smothered with blossom. You who

have never seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and

wonderful flowers countless years of culture had created. Then

someone suggested that their plaything should be exhibited in the

nearest building, and so I was led past the sphinx of white marble,

which had seemed to watch me all the while with a smile at my

astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone. As I

went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a

profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible

merriment, to my mind.

‘The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal

dimensions. I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of

little people, and with the big open portals that yawned before me

shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the world I saw

over their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and

flowers, a long neglected and yet weedless garden. I saw a number

of tall spikes of strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps

across the spread of the waxen petals. They grew scattered, as if

wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as I say, I did not examine

them closely at this time. The Time Machine was left deserted on the

turf among the rhododendrons.

‘The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did

not observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw

suggestions of old Phoenician decorations as I passed through, and

it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather-worn.

Several more brightly clad people met me in the doorway, and so we

entered, I, dressed in dingy nineteenth-century garments, looking

grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers, and surrounded by an

eddying mass of bright, soft-colored robes and shining white limbs,

in a melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech.

‘The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with

brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed

with coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered

light. The floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white

metal, not plates nor slabs–blocks, and it was so much worn, as I

judged by the going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply

channelled along the more frequented ways. Transverse to the length

were innumerable tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised

perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits.

Some I recognized as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange,

but for the most part they were strange.

‘Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions.

Upon 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 by, 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 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.

‘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 realized 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 off-spring are secure, there is less

necessity–indeed there is no necessity–for an efficient family,

and the specialization 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 recognize,

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 realize 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 civilizing 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 to-day 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 organized, 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 leaped. 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

engaged in no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither social

nor economical struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all

that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone. It

was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of

a social paradise. The difficulty of increasing population had been

met, I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.

‘But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to

the change. What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is

the cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom:

conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and

the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the

loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and

decision. And the institution of the family, and the emotions that

arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring,

parental self-devotion, all found their justification and support in

the imminent dangers of the young. _Now_, where are these imminent

dangers? There is a sentiment arising, and it will grow, against

connubial jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion

of all sorts; unnecessary things now, and things that make us

uncomfortable, savage survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant

life.

‘I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of

intelligence, and those big abundant ruins, and it strengthened my

belief in a perfect conquest of Nature. For after the battle comes

Quiet. Humanity had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had

used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which

it lived. And now came the reaction of the altered conditions.

‘Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that

restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness.

Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary

to survival, are a constant source of failure. Physical courage and

the love of battle, for instance, are no great help–may even be

hindrances–to a civilized man. And in a state of physical balance

and security, power, intellectual as well as physical, would be out

of place. For countless years I judged there had been no danger of

war or solitary violence, no danger from wild beasts, no wasting

disease to require strength of constitution, no need of toil. For

such a life, what we should call the weak are as well equipped as

the strong, are indeed no longer weak. Better equipped indeed they

are, for the strong would be fretted by an energy for which there

was no outlet. No doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw

was the outcome of the last surgings of the now purposeless energy

of mankind before it settled down into perfect harmony with the

conditions under which it lived–the flourish of that triumph which

began the last great peace. This has ever been the fate of energy in

security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor

and decay.

‘Even this artistic impetus would at last die away–had almost died

in the Time I saw. To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to

sing in the sunlight: so much was left of the artistic spirit, and

no more. Even that would fade in the end into a contented

inactivity. We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and

necessity, and, it seemed to me, that here was that hateful

grindstone broken at last!

‘As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this

simple explanation I had mastered the problem of the world–mastered

the whole secret of these delicious people. Possibly the checks they

had devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well,

and their numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary.

That would account for the abandoned ruins. Very simple was my

explanation, and plausible enough–as most wrong theories are!