Hg Wells Time Machine Quotes

We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams.

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.

It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.

We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow. With out them we grow weak like the Eloi in comfort and security. We need to constantly be challenging ourselves in order to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence.

Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.

Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough---as most wrong theories are!

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

Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all.

For after the Battle comes quiet.

It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.

We are always getting away from the present moment. Our mental existence, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave.

I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide.

The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.

There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.

Things that would have made fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily.

Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future.

When she was fifteen if you'd told her that when she was twenty she'd be going to bed with bald-headed men and liking it, she would have thought you very abstract.

If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Under-world in a second, and examined it at leisure.

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

To sit among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies monomania. Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all.

This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then comes languor and decay.

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... And the harvest was what I saw.

You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.

The too perfect security of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, a general dwindling in size strength and intelligence.

There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it.

It's against reason," said Filby. "What reason?" said the Time Traveller.

[...] even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

But I was too restless to watch long; I'm too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours -- that's another matter.

No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie--or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?

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.

The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.

You know that great pause that comes upon things before the dusk, even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness.

He, I know - for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made - thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilisation only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end.

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.

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.

The time traveller proceeded, "any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thicknessa and Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimentions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.

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 civilized 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?

Fine hospitality," said I, "to a man who has travelled innumerable years to see you.

Then suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought of the years I had spent in study and toil to get into the future age, and now my passion of anxiety to get out of it.

Can an instantaneous cube exist?' 'Don't follow you,' said Filby. 'Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?' Filby became pensive. 'Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded, 'any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.

So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.

اذا ذهب العقل والقوة فان الامتنان و الحب الرقيق بين الانسان و الانسان سبيقيان فى قلب الانسان.

Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth?

Time is only a kind of Space.

There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.

Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had come home to him.

In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked—those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!—as they stared in their blindness and bewilderment.

I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last.

You know that great pause that comes upon things before the dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was clear, remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the sunset. Well, that night the expectation took the colour of my fears.

It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.

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.

All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives - all that was over.

Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back—changed!

but I know it was a dull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head and down its back.

when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

Even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness.

The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And

Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body? I began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal.

The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting point on their south-eastern face.

Why not?' said the Time Traveller.

It took two years to make,' retorted the Time Traveller

Don't follow you,' said Filby.

I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw a solitary white, ape-like creature running rather quickly up the hill, and once near the ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some dark body.

So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour.

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveler was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we should have shown him far less skepticism. For we should have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby.

There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness

Then suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought of the years I had spent in study and toil to get into the future age, and now my passion of anxiety to get out of it. I had made myself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised. Although it was at my own expense, I could not help myself. I laughed aloud.

Strength is the outcome of need;

But wait until to-morrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.

Its triumph had not been simply a triumph over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and the fellow-man.

Here was the same beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same splendid palaces and magnificent ruins, the same silver river running between its fertile banks.

Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded, 'any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration.

Have a good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no trickery. I don't want to waste this model, and then be told I'm a quack.

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

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.

But the Time Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him.

He walked with just such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps.

There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness

I surveyed the broad view of our old world under the sunset of that long day

But to me the future is still black and blank—is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And

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.

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.

Three-Dimensional representations of his Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing.

I had made myself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised.

instantaneous cube exist?' 'Don't follow you,' said Filby. 'Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?

But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?

And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the present moment.

Have you been time travelling?

I had not, I said to myself, come into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation.

Take it as a lie—or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction.

I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a

His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated.

And with that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth. He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. Afterwards he got more animated.

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 women, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations were mere militant necessities of an age of physical force; where population is balanced and abundant, much child-bearing becomes and 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 effective 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 i this future age, it was complete.

Félix J. Palma, author of the New York Times bestselling The Map of Time, inspired by H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, concludes his time-travel Victorian trilogy with a mesmerizing new novel, The Map of Chaos

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,

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.

Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?” Filby became pensive. “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration.

You know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could represent one of four—if they could master the perspective of the thing.

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 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.

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 organized, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies.

Herbert George Wells, better known as H. G. Wells, was an English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau. He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and produced works in many different genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary. He was also an outspoken socialist. His later works become increasingly political and didactic, and only his early science fiction novels are widely read today. Wells, along with Hugo Gernsback and Jules Verne, is sometimes referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction". Source: Wikipedia

But to me the future is still black and blank–is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers –shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle–to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.

Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could represent one of four—if they could master the perspective of the thing. See?

Language is the nourishment of the thought of man, that serves only as it undergoes metabolism, and becomes thought and lives, and in its very living passes away. You scientific people, with your fancy of a terrible exactitude in language, of indestructible foundations built, as that Wordsworthian doggerel on the title-page of Nature says, "for aye," are marvellously without imagination!

He protested. "Wealth," he said, "is no sort of power at all unless you make it one. If it is so in your world it is so by inadvertency. Wealth is a State-made thing, a convention, the most artificial of powers. You can, by subtle statesmanship, contrive what it shall buy and what it shall not. In your world it would seem you have made leisure, movement, any sort of freedom, life itself, _purchaseable_. The more fools you! A poor working man with you is a man in discomfort and fear. No wonder your rich have power.

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity.

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 Time Machine,

I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes – to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed. ‘It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.

That City of yours is a morbid excrescence. Wall Street is a morbid excrescence. Plainly it's a thing that has grown out upon the social body rather like -- what do you call it? -- an embolism, thrombosis, something of that sort. A sort of heart in the wrong place, isn't it? Anyhow -- there it is. Everything seems obliged to go through it now; it can hold up things, stimulate things, give the world fever or pain, and yet all the same -- is it necessary, Irwell? Is it inevitable? Couldn't we function economically quite as well without it? Has the world got to carry that kind of thing for ever? "What real strength is there in a secondary system of that sort? It's secondary, it's parasitic. It's only a sort of hypertrophied, uncontrolled counting-house which has become dominant by falsifying the entries and intercepting payment. It's a growth that eats us up and rots everything like cancer. Financiers make nothing, they are not a productive department. They control nothing. They might do so, but they don't. They don't even control Westminster and Washington. They just watch things in order to make speculative anticipations. They've got minds that lie in wait like spiders, until the fly flies wrong. Then comes the debt entanglement. Which you can break, like the cobweb it is, if only you insist on playing the wasp. I ask you again what real strength has Finance if you tackle Finance? You can tax it, regulate its operations, print money over it without limit, cancel its claims. You can make moratoriums and jubilees. The little chaps will dodge and cheat and run about, but they won't fight. It is an artificial system upheld by the law and those who make the laws. It's an aristocracy of pickpocket area-sneaks. The Money Power isn't a Power. It's respectable as long as you respect it, and not a moment longer. If it struggles you can strangle it if you have the grip...You and I worked that out long ago, Chiffan... "When we're through with our revolution, there will be no money in the world but pay. Obviously. We'll pay the young to learn, the grown-ups to function, everybody for holidays, and the old to make remarks, and we'll have a deuce of a lot to pay them with. We'll own every real thing; we, the common men. We'll have the whole of the human output in the market. Earn what you will and buy what you like, we'll say, but don't try to use money to get power over your fellow-creatures. No squeeze. The better the economic machine, the less finance it will need. Profit and interest are nasty ideas, artificial ideas, perversions, all mixed up with betting and playing games for money. We'll clean all that up..." "It's been going on a long time," said Irwell. "All the more reason for a change," said Rud.

Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people—due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor—is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion. And this same widening gulf—which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations towards refined habits on the part of the rich—will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour.

İnsanın kafasını karıştıran bir sürü bilinmeyenin ortasında oturup durmak bir işe yaramaz. Sonunda bunu takıntı haline getirirsin. Yolunu yordamını öğren, dikkatle izle, anlam çıkarmak için çok acele tahminlerde bulunmaktan kaçın. Eninde sonunda tümünün ipuçlarını bulacaksın.

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

Evrim kuramı,” der profesör, “hayvan ve bitki bilimciler tarafından yaygın kabul görüyor, insana da tereddütsüz uygulanıyor. Onun ruhuna uyup uymadığı hâlâ tartışılıyor tabii, ama evrimin onun bedeni için geçerli olduğunu herkes kabul ediyor. İnsanın maymun benzeri atalardan geldiği, koşullar sayesinde insan şeklini aldığı söyleniyor bize, bu maymunların da daha alt düzeydeki atalarının biçimlerinden türediği, bunun ezeli protoplazma jölesine dek gittiği söyleniyor. Yani, belli ki, evrenin düzeni sona ulaşmazsa, insan gelecekte de başka değişiklikler geçirecek ve sonunda insan olmaktan çıkarak başka bir canlı varlık tipi meydana getirecek. Hemen o büyüleyici soru ortaya çıkıyor: Bu varlık ne olacak? Bir an için türümüzün üzerindeki biçimlendirici etkileri düşünelim. “Nasıl ki kuş, kanadın yaratığı, yani her şeyiyle uçmak üzere şekillenmiş, değişmiş bir yaratık halini aldıysa, nasıl ki balık da yüzen bir yaratık, yani bir hidrodinamik sorununun değişmeyen koşullarını karşılamak zorunda kaldıysa, insan da beynin yaratığıdır; eğer yaşayacaksa, fiziksel güçle değil, zekâyla yaşayacaktır. O yüzden onda saf “hayvani” olan şey onun nihai gelişiminde bastırılır ve hiç kuşkusuz, bastırılmalıdır. Evrim, MS 1892 yılındaki mevcut fikirlere göre mükemmellik elde etmeye yönelik mekanik bir eğilim değildir; sadece biçimlendirici hayatın, iyisiyle kötüsüyle, çevresindeki koşullara sürekli uyum sağlamasıdır.

Literature

(for so it will be convenient to speak of him)

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.

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.

There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space, except that our consciousness moves along it.

So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?' 'Don't follow you,' said Filby. 'Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?

Clearly,' the Time Traveler proceeded, 'any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and - Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I was explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.

Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame.

The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed.

The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper.

Did I ever make a Time Machine, or a model of a Time Machine? Or is it all only a dream? They say life is a dream, a precious poor dream at times—but I can’t stand another that won’t fit. It’s madness. And where did the dream come from? . . . I

What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion?

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.

Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough—as most wrong theories are!

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 specialization of the sexes with reference to their children’s needs disappears.

The Medical Man smoked a cigarette.

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.

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.

It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical people have been asking why three dimensions particularly—why not another direction at right angles to the other three?—and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimension geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could represent one of four—if they could master the perspective of the thing.

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

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.

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.” The Time Machine — H.G. Wells

Though other cultures-like the Sumerian, the Mayan, and the Indic-coupled human destiny with long vistas of abstract calendar time, the essential contribution of the Renascence was to relate the cumulative results of history to the variety of cultural achievements that marked the successive generations. By unburying statues, monuments, buildings, cities, by reading old books and inscriptions, by re-entering a long-abandoned world of ideas, these new explorers in time became aware of fresh potentialities in their own existence. These pioneers of the mind invented a time-machine more wonderful than H.G. Wells' technological contraption. At a moment when the new mechanical world-picture had no place for 'time' except as a function of movement in space, historic time-duration, in Henri Bergson's sense, which includes persistence through replication, imitation, and memory-began to play a conscious part in day-to-day choices. If the living present could be visibly transformed, or at least deliberately modified from Gothic to a formalized Classic structure, so could the future be remolded, too. Historic time could be colonized and cultivated, and human culture itself became a collective artifact. The sciences actually profited by this historic restoration, getting a fresh impetus from Thales, Democritus, Archimedes, Hero of Alexandria.

You can show black is white by argument,” said Filby, “but you will never convince me.

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 movement. 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.

Zihinsel çok yönlülüğün değişim, tehlike ve belanın telafisi oluşu, gözden kaçırdığımız bir doğa yasasıdır.

Mevcut edebiyatımız iyi durumda, buna şüphe yok; ama bir düşünür için, yazılmamış kitaplar çok daha çekicidir.

I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind - a strange animal in an unknown world.

shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend.

Contemporary culture is a two-tiered system, like the Morlocks and the Eloi in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, except that it's been turned upside down. In The Time Machine the Eloi were an effete upper class, supported by lots of subterranean Morlocks who kept the technological wheels turning. But in our world it's the other way round. The Morlocks are in the minority, and they are running the show, because they understand how everything works. The much more numerous Eloi learn everything they know from being steeped from birth in electronic media directed and controlled by book-reading Morlocks. So many ignorant people could be dangerous if they got pointed in the wrong direction, and so we've evolved a popular culture that is (a) almost unbelievably infectious and (b) neuters every person who gets infected by it, by rendering them unwilling to make judgments and incapable of taking stands.

So, as I see it, the Upper-world man had drifted towards his feeble prettiness, and the Under-world to mere mechanical industry. But

Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all.’ Then

You know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could represent one of four—

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless.

In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a month between myself and these monsters.

To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to sing in the sunlight: so much was left of the artistic spirit, and no more.

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!

years I had spent in study and toil

Above me, in the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into nothingness.

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.

I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.” “That is all right,” said the Psychologist. “Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence.” “There I object,” said Filby. “Of course a solid body may exist. All real things—” “So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?” “Don’t follow you,” said Filby. “Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?” Filby became pensive. “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.

Arthur C. Clarke is perhaps H.G. Wells’ truest heir not within the confines of science fiction but through the breadth of literature. Clarke, like Wells, was a realist and historian with more than a slash of mysticism, and it is that mysticism (The Time Machine for Wells; Childhood’s End for Clarke) which informed their work, differentiated it from most of their contemporaries and eventually made them central to the canon. Neither thought of himself as a mystic; both were committed rationalists. (Clarke’s 1992 eulogy on the death of Isaac Asimov mourned the loss of this great logical mind “At a time in human history when logic was never more needed.”) But the misty, lost far future of The Time Machine

any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration.

الضرورة والألم يجعلان الإنسان ذكيا وقويا كما يسن حجر الشحذ السكين.

There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter,

Viendo la desenvoltura y la seguridad en que vivían aquellas gentes, comprendí que aquel estrecho parecido de los sexos era, después de todo, lo que podía esperarse; pues la fuerza de un hombre y la delicadeza de una mujer, la institución de la familia y la diferencia de ocupaciones son simples necesidades militantes de una edad de fuerza física. Allí donde la población es equilibrada y abundante, muchos nacimientos llegan a ser un mal más que un beneficio para el Estado; allí donde la violencia es rara y la prole es segura, hay menos necesidad -realmente no existe la necesidad- de una familia eficaz, y la especialización de los sexos con referencia a las necesidades de sus hijos desaparece (p.49).

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

Zihinsel çok yönlülüğün değişim, tehlike ve belanın telafisi oluşu, gözden kaçırdığımız bir doğa yasasıdır. Çevresiyle kusursuz bir âhenk içinde yaşayan bir hayvan, mükemmel bir mekanizmadır. Alışkanlık ve içgüdü çaresiz kalmadıkça doğa zekâya asla başvurmaz. Değişimin ve değişime gereksinimin olmadığı yerde akıl da yoktur. Yalnızca çok çeşitli ihtiyaçları ve tehlikeleri karşılamak zorunda olan hayvanlar zekâdan paylarını alırlar. Çev. Volkan Gürses

I was to discover the atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering our retreat.

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.

The Time Machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons.

It was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me further and further afield in my exploring expeditions.

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!

He, I know — thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end.

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.

These Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon—probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena dancing at my side!

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 movement. 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.

This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor and decay.

Tenía que ser mi única esperanza, una mísera esperanza tal vez, pero mejor que la desesperación.

I am too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours—that is another matter.

I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes--to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed. 'It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.

plausible enough--as most wrong theories are!

Power was passing even in the Victorian time to the party machinery, secret, complex, and corrupt. Very speedily power was in the hands of great men of business who financed the machines. A time came when the real power and interest of the Empire rested visibly between the two party councils, ruling by newspapers and electoral organisations—two small groups of rich and able men, working at first in opposition, then presently together.

This has ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and eroticism, and then come languor and decay.

The Time Machine

Fine hospitality,' said I, 'to a man who has travelled innumerable years to see you.

And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers -- shriveled up now, and brown and flat and brittle -- to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of Man.