The Time Machine - H.G. Wells Chapter 5

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is a classic science fiction novel that follows an unnamed scientist, known as the Time Traveller, who invents a machine that allows him to travel through time. He journeys to the distant future, arriving in the year 802,701, where he encounters two distinct races: the gentle, childlike Eloi and the sinister, underground-dwelling Morlocks. As he explores this strange future, he realizes the dark implications of humanity’s evolution. The novel explores themes of class struggle, the passage of time, and the fate of civilization, making it one of the most influential works in science fiction history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter five of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Time Machine,
Chapter five. As I stood there musing over this too
perfect triumph of man, the full moon, yellow and gibbous,

(00:21):
came up out of an overflow of silver light. In
the northeast. The bright little figure ceased to move about below.
A noiseless owl flitted by, and I shivered with the
chill of the night. I determined to descend and find
where I could sleep. I looked for the building I knew.
Then My eye traveled along to the figure of the

(00:42):
white sphinx, upon the pedestal of bronze, growing distinct. As
the light of the rising moon grew brighter, I could
see the silver birch against it. There was the tangle
of rhododendron bushes, black in the pale light. And there
was the little lawn. I looked at the lawn again.
A queer doubt chilled my complacency. No, said I stoutly

(01:05):
to myself. That was not the lawn. But it was
the lawn, for the white, leprous face of the sphinx
was towards it. Can you imagine what I felt as
this conviction came home to me, but you cannot The
time machine was gone at once, like a lash across

(01:27):
the face. Came the possibility of losing my own age,
of being left helpless in this strange new world. The
bare thought of it was an actual physical sensation. I
could feel it grip me at the throat and stop
my breathing. In another moment, I was in a passion
of fear and running with great leaping strides down the slope.

(01:49):
Once I fell headlong and cut my face. I lost
no time in stanching the blood, but jumped up and
ran on, with a warm trickle down my cheek and chin.
All the time I ran, I was saying to myself,
they have moved it a little, pushed under the bushes,
out of the way. Nevertheless, I ran with all my might,

(02:10):
all the time, with the certainty that sometimes comes with
excessive dread. I knew that such assurance was folly. Knew
instinctively that the machine was removed out of my reach.
My breath came with pain. I suppose I covered the
whole distance from the hillcrest to the little lawn, two miles,
perhaps in ten minutes. And I am not a young man.

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I cursed aloud as I ran at my confident folly
in leaving the machine, wasting good breath. Thereby, I cried aloud,
and none answered. Not a creature seemed to be stirring
in the moonlit world. When I reached the lawn, my
worst fears were realized. Not a trace of the thing

(02:55):
was to be seen. I felt faint and cold. When
I faced the empty space among the black tangle of bushes.
I ran round it furiously, as if the thing might
be hidden in a corner, and then stopped abruptly, with
my hands clutching my hair. Above me towered the sphynx
upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining leprous in the light

(03:18):
of the rising moon. It seemed to smile in mockery
of my dismay. I might have consoled myself by imagining
the little people had put the mechanism in some shelter
for me, had I not felt assured of their physical
and intellectual inadequacy. That is what dismayed me, the sense
of some hitherto unsuspected power through whose intervention my invention

(03:43):
had vanished. Yet for one thing, I felt assured unless
some other age had produced its exact duplicate. The machine
could not have moved in time. The attachment of the
levers I will show you the method later prevented anyone
from tampering with it in that way. When they were removed,
it had moved and was hid only in space. But

(04:07):
then where could it be? I think I must have
had a kind of frenzy. I remember running violently in
and out among the moonlit bushes all round the Sphinx,
and startling some white animal that, in the dim light
I took for a small deer. I remember, too late
that night, beating the bushes with my clenched fist until

(04:29):
my knuckles were gashed and bleeding from the broken twigs. Then,
sobbing and raving in my anguish of mind, I went
down to the great building of Stone. The big hall
was dark, silent, and deserted. I slipped on the uneven
floor and fell over one of the malachite tables, almost

(04:50):
breaking my shin. I lit a match and went on
past the dusty curtains of which I have told you.
Then I found a second great hall, covered with cushions,
upon which perhaps a score or so of the little
people were sleeping. I have no doubt they found my
second appearance strange enough, coming suddenly out of the quiet

(05:12):
darkness with inarticulate noises and the splutter and flare of
a match, For they had forgotten about matches. Where is
my time machine? I began bawling like an angry child,
laying hands upon them and shaking them up together. I
must have been very queer to them. Some laughed, most

(05:34):
of them looked sorely frightened. When I saw them standing
round me, it came into my head that I was
doing as foolish a thing as it was possible for
me to do under the circumstances, in trying to revive
the sensation of fear. For reasoning from their daylight behavior,
I thought that fear must be forgotten. Abruptly, I dashed

(05:56):
down the match, and, knocking one of the people over
in my course, went blunt across the big dining hall again.
Out under the moonlight. I heard cries of terror, and
their little feet running and stumbling this way. And that
I do not remember all I did as the moon
crept up the sky. I suppose it was the unexpected

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nature of my loss that maddened me. I felt hopelessly
cut off from my own kind, a strange animal in
an unknown world. I must have raved to and fro
screaming and crying upon God and fate. I have a
memory of horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair

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wore away, of looking in this impossible place, and that
of groping among moonlit ruins and touching strange creatures in
the black shadows. At last, of lying on the ground
near the sphinx and weeping with absolute wretchedness. I had
nothing left but misery. Then I slept, and when I

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woke again it was full day, and a couple of
sparrows were hopping round me on the turf, within reach
of my arm. I sat up in the freshness of
the morning, trying to remember how I had got there,
and why I had such a profound sense of desertion
and despair. Then things came clear in my mind. With

(07:19):
the plain, reasonable daylight, I could look my circumstances fairly
in the face. I saw the wild folly of my
frenzy over night, and I could reason with myself. Suppose
the worst, I said, suppose the machine altogether lost, perhaps destroyed.
It behooves me to be calm and patient to learn

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the way of the people, to get a clear idea
of the method of my loss, and the means of
getting materials and tools, so that in the end, perhaps
I may make another that would be my only hope.
Perhaps but better than despair. And after all it was
a beautiful and curious world. But probably the machine had

(08:05):
only been taken away. Still, I must be calm and patient,
find its hiding place, and recover it by force or cunning.
And with that I scrambled to my feet and looked
about me, wondering where I could bathe. I felt weary, stiff,
and travel soiled. The freshness of the morning made me

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desire an equal freshness. I had exhausted my emotion. Indeed,
as I went about my business, I found myself wondering
at my intense excitement. Over night, I made a careful
examination of the ground about the little lawn. I wasted
some time in futile questionings, conveyed as well as I
was able to such of the little people as came by.

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They all failed to understand my gestures. Some were simply stolid,
some thought it was a jest and laughed at me.
I had the hardest task in the world to keep
my hands off their pretty laughing faces. It was a
foolish impulse, but the devil begotten of fear and blind anger,
was ill curbed and still eager to take advantage of

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my perplexity. The turf gave better counsel. I found a
groove ripped in it, about midway between the pedestal of
the sphinx and the marks of my feet, where on
arrival I had struggled with the overturned machine. There were
other signs of removal about, with queer, narrow footprints, like

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those I could imagine made by a sloth. This directed
my closer attention to the pedestal. It was, as I
think I have said of bronze. It was not a
mere block, but highly decorated, with deep framed panels on
either side. I went and wrapped at these. The pedestal
was hollow. Examining the panels with care, I found them

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discontinuous with the frames. There were no handles or keyholes,
but possibly the panels if they were doors, as I supposed,
opened from within. One thing was clear enough to my mind.
It took no very great mental effort to infer that
my time machine was inside that pedestal, But how it

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got there was a different problem. I saw the heads
of two orange clad people coming through the bushes and
under some blossom covered apple trees towards me. I turned
smiling to them and beckoned them to me. They came,
and then, pointing to the bronze pedestal, I tried to
intimate my wish to open it. But at my first

(10:37):
gesture towards this, they behaved very oddly. I don't know
how to convey their expression to you. Suppose you were
to use a grossly improper gesture to a delicate minded woman,
it is how she would look. They went off as
if they had received the last possible insult. I tried

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a sweet looking little chap in white next, with exactly
the same result. Somehow, his manner made me feel ashamed
of myself. But as you know, I wanted the time machine,
and I tried him once more. As he turned off
like the others, my temper got the better of me.
In three strides, I was after him, had him by

(11:19):
the loose part of his robe round the neck, and
began dragging him towards the sphinx. Then I saw the
horror and repugnance of his face, and all of a
sudden I let him go. But I was not beaten yet.
I banged with my fist at the bronze panels. I
thought I heard something stir inside. To be explicit, I

(11:40):
thought I heard a sound like a chuckle, But I
must have been mistaken. Then I got a big pebble
from the river and came and hammered till I had
flattened a coil in the decorations, and the verdigris came
off in powdery flakes. The delicate little people must have
heard me hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile away on
either hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a

(12:03):
crowd of them upon the slopes, looking furtively at me.
At last, hard and tired, I sat down to watch
the place. But I was too restless to watch long.
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 got

(12:26):
up after a time and began walking aimlessly through the
bushes towards the hill. Again. Patience, said I to myself.
If you want your machine again, you must leave that
sphinx alone. If they mean to take your machine away,
it's little good. You're wrecking their bronze panels. And if
they don't, you will get it back as soon as
you can ask for it to sit among all those

(12:48):
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. Then
suddenly the humor of the situation came into my mind,

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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 going through the Big Palace. It seemed to me

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that the little people avoided me. It may have been
my fancy, or it may have had something to do
with my hammering at the gates of bronze. Yet I
felt tolerably sure of the avoidance. I was careful, however,
to show no concern and to abstain from any pursuit
of them, and in the course of a day or
two things got back to the old footing. I made

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what progress I could in the language, and in addition
I pushed my explorations here and there. Either I missed
some subtle point, or their language was excessively simple, almost
exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to
be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of

(14:21):
figurative language. Their sentences were usually simple and of two words,
and I failed to convey or understand any but the
simplest propositions. I determined to put the thought of my
time machine and the mystery of the bronze doors under
the sphinx, as much as possible, in a corner of memory,
until my growing knowledge would lead me back to them

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in a natural way. Yet a certain feeling you may understand,
tethered me in a circle of a few miles round
the point of my arrival. So far as I could see,
all the world displayed the same exuberant richness as the
Thames Valley. From every hill I climbed, I saw the
same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in material and style.

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The same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same blossom laden
trees and tree ferns. Here and there water shone like silver,
and beyond the land rose into blue, undulating hills, and
so faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar
feature which presently attracted my attention was the presence of

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certain circular wells, several as it seemed to me of
a very great depth. One lay by the path up
the hill which I had followed during my first walk.
Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought,
and protected by a little cupula from the rain. Sitting
by the side of these wells and peering down into

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the shafted darkness, I could see no gleam of water,
nor could I start any reflection with a lighted match.
But in all of them I heard a certain sound,
a thud, thud, dud, like the beating of some big engine.
And I discovered from the flaring of the matches that
a steady current of air set down the shafts. Further,

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I threw a scrap of paper into the throat of one,
and instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at once
sucked swiftly out of sight. After a time, too, I
came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here
and there upon the slopes for above them there was
often just such a flicker in the air as one

(16:33):
sees on a hot day above a sun scorched beach.
Putting things together, I reached a strong suggestion of an
extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose true import it was
difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to associate
it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. It was

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an obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong. And here
I must admit that I learned very little of drains
and bells, and modes of conveyance and the like conveyances
during my time in this real future. In some of
these visions of Utopia's and coming times which I have read,

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there is a vast amount of detail about building and
social arrangements and so forth. But while such details are
easy enough to obtain when the whole world is contained
in one's imagination, they are altogether inaccessible to a real traveler.
Amid such realities as I found here, conceive the tale
of London, which a Negro fresh from Central Africa would

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take back to his tribe. What would he know of
railway companies, of social movements, of telephone and telegraph wires,
of the parcels delivery company, and postal orders and the like.
Yet we at least should be willing enough to explain
these things to him. And even of what he knew,
how much could he make his untraveled and either apprehend

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or believe? Then? Think how narrow the gap between a
Negro and a white man of our times, and how
wide the interval between myself and these of the golden age.
I was sensible of much which was unseen, and which
contributed to my comfort. But save for a general impression

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of automatic organization, I fear I can convey very little
of the difference to your mind. In the matter of sepulcher,
for instance, I could see no signs of crematoria, nor
anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me that
possibly there might be cemeteries or crematoria somewhere beyond the

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range of my explorings. This again, was a question I
deliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at first
entirely defeated. Upon the point the thing puzzled me, and
I was led to make a further remark, which puzzled
me still more, that aged and infirm among these people

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there were none. I must confess that my satisfaction with
my first theories of an automatic civilization and a decadent
humanity did not long endure. Yet I could think of
no other let me put my difficulties. The several big
palaces I had explored were mere living places, great dining halls,

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and sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no appliances
of any kind. Yet these people were clothed in pleasant
fabrics that must at times need renewal, and their sandals,
though undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metal work. Somehow,
such things must be made, and the little people displayed

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no vestige of a creative tendency. There were no shops,
no workshops, no sign of importations among them. They spent
all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river,
in making love in a half playful fashion, in eating
fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things were
kept going. Then again, about the time machine, something I

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knew not what had taken it into the hollow pedestal
of the white sphinx. Why, for the life of me
I could not imagine those waterless wells too, those flickering pillars.
I felt I lacked a clue. I felt, how shall
I put it? Suppose you found an inscription with sentences

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here and there in excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith
others made up of words of letters, even absolutely unknown
to you. Well, on the third day of my visit,
that was how the world of eight hundred and two thousand,
seven hundred and one presented itself to me. That day too,
I made a friend of a It happened that, as

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I was watching some of the little people bathing in
a shallow one of them was seized with a cramp
and began drifting down stream. The main current ran rather swiftly,
but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer. It
will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency
in these creatures, when I tell you that none made

(21:22):
the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing
which was drowning before their eyes. When I realized this,
I hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at
a point lower down, I caught the poor mite and
drew her safe to land. A little rubbing of the
limbs soon brought her round, and I had the satisfaction

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of seeing she was all right. Before I left her,
I had got to such a low estimate of her
kind that I did not expect any gratitude from her
in that. However, I was wrong. This happened in the morning.
In the afternoon, I met my little woman as I
belie leave. It was as I was returning towards my

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center from an exploration, and she received me with cries
of delight and presented me with a big garland of flowers,
evidently made for me and me alone. The thing took
my imagination very possibly I had been feeling desolate. At
any rate, I did my best to display my appreciation
of the gift. We were soon seated together in a

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little stone arbor, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. The
creature's friendliness affected me exactly as a child's might have done.
We passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands.
I did the same to hers. Then I tried talk
and found that her name was Weena, which, though I

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don't know what it meant, somehow seemed appropriate enough. That
was the beginning of a queer friendship, which lasted a
week and ended. As I will tell you, she was
exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always.
She tried to follow me everywhere, and on my next
journey out and about. It went to my heart to

(23:08):
tire her down and leave her at last, exhausted and
calling after me rather plaintively. But the problems of the
world had to be mastered. I had not, I said
to myself, come into the future to carry on a
miniature flirtation. Yet her distress when I left her was
very great. Her expostulations at the parting were sometimes frantic,

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and I think altogether I had as much trouble as
comfort from her devotion. Nevertheless, she was somehow a great comfort.
I thought it was a mere childish affection that made
her cling to me until it was too late. I
did not clearly know what I had inflicted upon her
when I left her, Nor until it was too late

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did I clearly understand what she was to me. For
by merely seeming fond of me and showing in her weak,
futile way that she cared for me, the little doll
of a creature presently gave my return to the neighborhood
of the White Sphinx almost the feeling of coming home,
and I would watch for her tiny figure of white

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and gold so soon as I came over the hill.
It was from her, too that I learned that fear
had not yet left the world. She was fearless enough
in the daylight, and she had the oddest confidence in me.
For once, in a foolish moment, I made threatening grimaces
at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she

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dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness, to
her was the one thing dreadful. It was a singularly
passionate emotion, and it set me thinking and observing. I discovered, then,
among other things, that these little people gathered into the
great houses after dark and slept in droves. To enter

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upon them without a light was to put them into
a tumult of apprehension. I never found one out of doors,
or one sleeping alone within doors after dark. Yet I
was still such a blockhead that I missed the lesson
of that fear, And in spite of Weena's distress, I
insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering multitudes. It troubled

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her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for
me triumphed, and for five of the nights of our acquaintance,
including the last night of all, she slept with her
head pillowed on my arm. But my story slips away
from me as I speak of her. It must have
been the night before her rescue that I was awakened
about dawn. I had been restless, dreaming most disagreeably that

(25:44):
I was drowned, and that sea anemonies were feeling over
my face with their soft palps. I woke with a start,
and with an odd fancy that some grayish animal had
just rushed out of the chamber. I tried to get
to sleep again, but I felt restless and uncomfortable. It
was that dim gray hour when things are just creeping

(26:07):
out of darkness, when everything is colorless and clear cut
and yet unreal. I got up and went down into
the Great Hall, and so out upon the flagstones in
front of the palace. I thought I would make a
virtue of necessity and see the sunrise. The moon was setting,
and the dying moonlight, and the first pallor of dawn

(26:29):
were mingled in a ghastly half light. The bushes were
inky black, the ground a somber gray, the sky colorless
and cheerless. And up the hill I thought I could
see ghosts. There were several times, as I scanned the
slope I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw

(26:51):
a solitary, white, apelike creature running rather quickly up the hill,
and once near the ruins, I saw a leash of them,
carrying some dark body. They moved hastily. I did not
see what became of them. It seemed that they vanished
among the bushes. The dawn was still indistinct. You must
understand I was feeling that chill, uncertain early morning feeling

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you may have known. I doubted my eyes. As the
eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day
came on, and its vivid coloring returned upon the world
once more, I scanned the view keenly, but I saw
no vestige of my white figures. They were mere creatures
of the half light. They must have been ghosts, I said,

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I wonder whence they dated? For a queer notion of
grand Ellen's came into my head, and amused me. If
each generation die and leave ghosts, he argued, the world
at last will get overcrowded with them. On that theory,
they would have grown innumerable some eight hundred thousand years,

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and it was no great wonder to see four at once.
But the jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of
these figures all the morning, until Weena's rescue drove them
out of my head. I associated them in some indefinite
way with the white animal I startled in my first
passionate search for the time machine. But Weena was a

(28:21):
pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they were soon destined
to take far deadlier possession of my mind. I think
I have said how much hotter than our own was
the weather of this Golden age. I cannot account for it.
It may be that the Sun was hotter, or the
Earth nearer the sun. It is usual to assume that

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the Sun will go on cooling steadily in the future,
But people unfamiliar with such speculations as those of the
younger Darwin forget that the planets must ultimately fall back
one by one into the parent body. As these catastrophes occur.
Then the Sun will blaze with renewed energy, and it
may be that some inner planet had suffered this fate.

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Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the Sun was
very much hotter than we know it well. One very
hot morning, my fourth I think, as I was seeking
shelter from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin
near the Great House where I slept and fed, there
happened this strange thing. Clambering among these heaps of masonry,

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I found a narrow gallery whose end and side windows
were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with
the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me.
I entered it, groping for the change from light to
blackness made spots of color swim before me. Suddenly I halted, spellbound.

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A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against the daylight
without was watching me. Out of the darkness. The old
instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched
my hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I
was afraid to turn. Then the thought of the absolute

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security in which humanity appeared to be living came to
my mind, and then I remembered that strange terror of
the dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I advanced
a step and spoke. I will admit that my voice
was harsh and ill controlled. I put out my hand
and touched something soft. At once, the eyes darted sideways,

(30:36):
and something white ran past me. I turned with my
heart in my mouth, and saw a queer, little apelike figure,
its head held down in a peculiar manner, running across
the sunlit space behind me. It blundered against a block
of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was hidden
in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry.

(31:00):
My impression of it is, of course imperfect, but I
know it was a dull white and had strange, large
grayish red eyes, also that there was flaxen hair on
its head and down its back. But as I say,
it went too fast for me to see distinctly, I
cannot even say whether it ran on all fours or

(31:22):
only with its forearms held very low. After an instant's pause,
I followed it into the second heap of ruins. I
could not find it at first, but after a time,
in the profound obscurity, I came upon one of those
round well like openings of which I have told you,
half closed by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came

(31:45):
to me, could this thing have vanished down the shaft?
I lit a match, and looking down, I saw a small, white,
moving creature with large, bright eyes, which regarded me steadfastly
as it retreated. It made me shudder. It was so
like a human spider. It was clambering down the wall.

(32:06):
And now I saw for the first time a number
of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of
ladder down the shaft. Then the light burned my fingers
and fell out of my hand, going out as it dropped,
and when I lit another the little monster had disappeared.
I do not know how long I sat peering down

(32:26):
that well. It was not for some time that I
could succeed in persuading myself that the thing I had
seen was human. But gradually the truth dawned on me
that man had not remained one species, but had differentiated
into two distinct animals, that my graceful children of the
upper world were not the sole descendants of our generation,

(32:50):
but that this bleached, obscene nocturnal thing which had flashed
before me was also air to all the ages. I
thought of the flickering pillars, and of my theory of
an underground ventilation. I began to suspect their true import
And what I wondered was this leamur doing in my

(33:13):
scheme of a perfectly balanced organization? How was it related
to the indolent serenity of the beautiful upper worlders? And
what was hidden down there at the foot of that shaft.
I sat upon the edge of the well, telling myself
that at any rate, there was nothing to fear, and

(33:33):
that there I must descend for the solution of my difficulties,
and withal I was absolutely afraid to go. As I hesitated,
two of the beautiful upper world people came running in
their amorous sport across the daylight in the shadow. The
male pursued the female, flinging flowers at her as he ran.

(33:55):
They seemed distressed to find me my arm against the
overturned pillar peering down. Apparently it was considered bad form
to remark these apertures, for when I pointed to this
one and try to frame a question about it in
their tongue, they were still more visibly distressed and turned away.
But They were interested by my matches, and I struck

(34:17):
some to amuse them. I tried them again about the well,
and again I failed. So presently I left them, meaning
to go back to Weena and see what I could
get from her. But my mind was already in revolution.
My guesses and impressions were slipping and sliding to a
new adjustment. I had now a clue to the import

(34:39):
of these wells, to the ventilating towers, to the mystery
of the ghosts, to say nothing of a hint at
the meaning of the bronze gates and the fate of
the time machine. And very vaguely there came a suggestion
towards the solution of the economic problem that had puzzled me.

(35:00):
Here was the new view. Plainly, the second species of
man was subterranean. There were three circumstances in particular, which
made me think that its rare emergence above ground was
the outcome of a long, continued underground habit. In the
first place, there was the bleached look common in most
animals that live largely in the dark, the white fish

(35:22):
of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then those large eyes
with that capacity for reflecting light are common features of
nocturnal things, witness the owl and the cat. And last
of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty
yet fumbling, awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar

(35:46):
carriage of the head while in the light, all reinforced
the theory of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina beneath
my feet. Then the earth must be tunneled enormously, and
these tunnelings were the habitats of the new race. The
presence of ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes, everywhere,

(36:07):
in fact, except along the river valley, showed how universal
were its ramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume
that it was in this artificial underworld that such work
as was necessary to the comfort of the daylight race
was done. The notion was so plausible that I at
once accepted it, and went on to assume the how

(36:29):
of this splitting of the human species. I dare say
you will anticipate the shape of my theory, though for
myself I very soon felt that it fell far short
of the truth. At first, proceeding from the problems of
our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to me

(36:49):
that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and
social difference between the capitalist and the laborer was the
key to the whole position. No doubt, it will seem
grotesque enough to you, and wildly incredible, And yet even
now there are existing circumstances to point that way. There

(37:10):
is a tendency to utilize underground space for the less
ornamental purposes of civilization. There is the Metropolitan Railway in London,
for instance. There are the new electric railways. There are subways,
There are underground work rooms and restaurants, and they increase
and multiply. Evidently, I thought this tendency had increased till

(37:31):
industry had gradually lost its birthright in the sky. I
mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into larger
and ever larger underground factories, spending a still increasing amount
of its time therein till in the end, even now,
does not an East End worker live in such artificial
conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural

(37:54):
surface of the earth. 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.

(38:14):
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,

(38:39):
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 halves pursuing
pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the havel knots,
the workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labor.

(39:02):
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

(39:24):
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. As it seemed to me, the
refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed. Naturally enough, the
great triumph of humanity I had dreamed of took a

(39:44):
different shape in my mind. It had been no such
triumph of moral education and general cooperation as I had imagined. Instead,
I saw a real aristocracy, armed with a perfected science
and work to a logical conclusion, the industrial system of
to day. His triumph had not been simply a triumph

(40:06):
over nature, but a triumph over nature and the fellow man. This,
I must warn you, was my theory at the time.
I had no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the
utopian books. My explanation may be absolutely wrong. I still
think it is the most plausible one. But even on

(40:29):
this supposition, the balanced civilization that was at least attained
must have long since passed its zenith and was now
far fallen into decay. The too perfect security of the
upper worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration,
to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence. That

(40:52):
I could see clearly enough already what had happened to
the underworlders I did not yet suspect, but from what
I seen of the Morlocks that, by the way, was
the name by which the creatures were called, I could
imagine that the modification of the human type was even
far more profound than among the Eloi, the beautiful race

(41:13):
that I already knew. Then came troublesome doubts. Why had
the Morlocks taken my time machine? For I felt sure
it was they who had taken it. Why, too, if
the Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine
to me? And why were they so terribly afraid of

(41:33):
the dark. I proceeded, as I have said, to question
Weena about this underworld, But here again I was disappointed.
At first she would not understand my questions, and presently
she refused to answer them. She shivered, as though the
topic was unendurable, and when I pressed her, perhaps a

(41:54):
little harshly, she burst into tears. They were the only
tears except my own I ever saw in that golden age.
When I saw them, I ceased abruptly to trouble about
the Morlocks, and was only concerned in banishing these signs
of the human inheritance from Weena's eyes, and very soon

(42:16):
she was smiling and clapping her hands while I solemnly
burned a match. End of Chapter five