Chapter 1

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 ushed and animated. The re burned brightly,
and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver
caught the bubbles that ashed 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
runs gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in
this way  marking the points with a lean forenger  as we sat and
lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and
his fecundity.
'You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvertone or two
ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance,
they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.'
'Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?' said
Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.
'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  '
1
'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 inrmity of the
esh, 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. 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.'
'That,' said a very young man, making spasmodic eorts to relight his
cigar over the lamp; 'that ... very clear indeed.'
'Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,'
continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness.
'Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people
who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only
Page 1
H.G.Wells: the Time Machine
another way of looking at Time. ...

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