"The Time Machine": Or, The Fourth Dimension as Prophecy

Author(s): Robert M. Philmus

Source: PMLA , May, 1969, Vol. 84, No. 3 (May, 1969), pp. 530-535
Published by: Modern Language Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1261141

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to PMLA

This content downloaded from

157.38.199.86 on Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:06:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 THE TIME MACHINE; OR, THE FOURTH
DIMENSION AS PROPHECY
BY ROBERT M. PHILMUS

THE statements that H. G. Wells gave out in Traveller's vision of the future, his interpreta-
the twenties and thirties about his earlytion of it, and the reaction of his audience to the
"scientific romances" or "scientific fantasies,"prophetic report.3
as he alternately called them, are not sympathetic I
to the spirit of these works written before the
turn of the century. In general, he makes themTo begin then with the Time Traveller's
out to be slighter in substance or more ten- vision, "degeneration" is not, I think, a precise
enough description of the backsliding of the
dentious in tone than the serious reader coming
upon them now would find them. Nevertheless, human species into the less and less recognizably
Wells does not attempt wilfully to mislead oranthropomorphic descendants that the Traveller
comes upon in the world of 802,701 and beyond.
mystify his readers in later assessments of his
early romances; and in fact his own criticismItisis true that Wells himself used that term as
early as 1891 in an essay outlining the abstract
sometimes actively helpful in understanding his
fiction. idea behind his vision of the future;4 but in that
Of particular importance are his various same essay, entitled "Zoological Retrogression,"
observations about The Time Machine (1895); Wells also calls this process of reversion "deg-
and his Preface to the Scientific Romances radation,"5 which suggests the step-by-step
especially-an indispensable account of the decline from man to beast that he was to take
up in The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) as
theory and practice of his science fiction-draws
well. More accurately still, one can define the
attention to two aspects of this early fantasy
vision in The Time Machine of Homo sapiens
essential to interpreting it. The first of these
concerns the Time Traveller's vision of the gradually reduced to species lower and lower on
future, a vision which Wells characterizes theas evolutionary scale as a vision of devolution.
running "counter to the placid assumption" of
the nineties "that Evolution was a pro-human
1 The Scientific Romances of H. G. Wells (London, 1933),
force making things better and better for p. ix.man-
kind." The second point, already implicit in "The Time Machine: An Ironic Myth," Critical
I Bergonzi,
this last remark from the Preface, is that The
Quarterly, ii (1960), 293-305, and The Early H. G. Wells: A
Time Machine is an "assault on human self- Study of the Scientific Romances (Toronto, 1961), pp. 42-61;
satisfaction."' Hillegas, "Cosmic Pessimism in H. G. Wells' Scientific Ro-
mances," Papers of the Mich. Acad. of Sci., Arts, and Letters,
These observations can in effect be taken to
XLVI (1961), 657-658, and The Future as Nightmare: H. G.
summarize the findings of Bernard Bergonzi's Wells and the Anti-Utopians (New York, 1967), pp. 24-34.
study of The Time Machine as an "ironic myth"a All published drafts of The Time Machine share these
components, though the serialized versions appearing in the
of degeneration and Mark R. Hillegas' analysis
National Observer (1894) and the New Review (1895) differ
of it as "a serious attack on human compla-
from the first English edition, published by Heinemann, in
cency."2 Neither of these studies explains, how-
many respects-not all of them minor. Sometimes these dif-
ever, the Traveller's compulsion to resume his ferences give insight into the meaning of Wells's fantasy,
time-travelling, to return, presumably, to the though the serialized versions of course count only as outside
evidence for any interpretation. Otherwise they are of inter-
world of the Eloi and the Morlocks; and it est is solely to a study of Wells's progress as a literary artist, a
towards an explanation of this response to the subject it is not my intention to discuss explicitly here.
vision or prophecy of The Time Machine that Some evaluation of the merits of the Heinemann version of
my own interpretation is directed. It seems to The Time Machine relative to the various previously pub-
me that Wells has structured his romance so as lished drafts, including the first American edition, can be
found in Bergonzi's "The Publication of The Time Machine
to educe the ultimate consequences of both 1894-5,"
the RES, N.S., IX (1960), 42-51.
myth he develops and the several internal4 The fact that Wells was familiar with the notion of de-
points of view towards it. Since the fantasy generation
thus at this early date would seem to reduce the pos-
sible extent of any influence on him of Max Nordau's De-
approaches the very postulates of his science
generation (1894), which Bergonzi adduces as a source for the
fiction, I propose to examine its structure inof the future in The Time Machine.
vision
detail, considering summarily but analytically
"Zoological Retrogression," The Gentleman's Magazine,
the components of that structure: the Time7 Sept. 1891, p. 246.

530

This content downloaded from

157.38.199.86 on Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:06:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Robert M. Philmius 531

The human ancestry of the degenerate species The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow
that the Traveller discovers in the "Golden in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering
Age" of 802,701 is scarcely discernible. white flakes in the air increased in number. From the
The
edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond
feeble and "childlike" Eloi (p. 38)6 are more
these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It
human than the "ape-like" and predatory
would be hard to convey the stillness of it ... As the
Morlocks (p. 77) that emerge nightly from
darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more
dark catacombs to prey upon the creatures abundant
of . .. and the cold of the air more intense. At
the "upper-world"; but while "modificationlast,
of one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white
the human type" among the Morlocks has been
peaks of the distant hills vanished into blackness. The
"far more profound than among the 'Eloi'"breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central
(p. 84), the process of devolution has byshadow
no of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another
moment the pale stars alone were visible. All else was
means reached an equilibrium. The oppressive,
rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.
almost Manichean, threat to the sunlit paradise
of the Eloi which the dark and demonic "under- (pp. 140-141)
world" of the Morlocks imposes becomes finally
In retrospect, it seems that the unbalanced
the impending destruction of the solar system
itself,7 foreshadowed in the total blacknessstruggle
of between the Eloi and the Morlocks
the solar eclipse which concludes the chapter prepares for this final vision, that a terrible
called "The Further Vision." logic compels the conclusion: "The sky was
The paradise-hell of the Eloi and the Mor- absolutely black." "People unfamiliar with such
speculations as those of the younger Darwin,"
locks in fact leads causally as well as temporally
to what the Traveller sees as the further vision the Time Traveller had remarked earlier, "for-
of devolution tending towards the extinction of get that the planets must ultimately fall back
all life. In an episode appearing in the New one by one into the parent body" (p. 76). This
Review but deleted subsequently, he comes next is a vision hardly in accord with "Excelsior"
upon a species more degraded than the Mor- optimism; on the contrary, it is precisely cal-
locks. Of this creature, which he likens to "rab- culated to "run counter to the placid assump-
bits or some breed of kangaroo," the Traveller tion . . that Evolution was a pro-human force
reports: "I was surprised to see that the thing making things better and better for mankind."9
had five feeble digits to both its fore and hind Indeed, the ideas Wells is dealing with are, as
feet-the fore feet, indeed, were almost as he stated in the early essay on "Zoological
human as the fore feet of a frog. It had, more- Retrogression," an "evolutionary antithesis":
over, a roundish head, with a projecting fore-
... there is almost always associated with the sug-
head and forward-looking eyes." As a result of gestion of advance in biological phenomena an opposite
his examination, he admits that "A disagreeable idea, which is its essential complement. The tech-
apprehension crossed my mind"; but he has no nicality expressing this would, if it obtained sufficient
opportunity to observe "my grey animal, or currency in the world of culture, do much to reconcile
grey man, whichever it was" at greater length the naturalist and his traducers. The toneless glare of
because he perceives that he is being stalked by optimistic evolution would then be softened by a
a monster similar to a gigantic centipede.8 It is shadow; the monotonous reiteration of 'Excelsior' by
people who did not climb would cease; the too sweet
left for the reader to infer that at this point in
the future the Eloi have devolved into creatures harmony of the spheres would be enhanced by a
with "five feeble digits," in this case the victims
of giant centipedes. e All quotations from The Time Machine refer to the first
English edition (London, 1895).
At the next stop in the distant future (in
both the Heinemann and the New Review ver- 7 As Bergonzi observes of The Time Machine, "its central
narrative is polarised between opposed groups of imagery,
sions) all anthropomorphic life seems to havethe paradisal. . and the demonic" ("An Ironic Myth,"
disappeared, and the Traveller sees instead "ap. 300).
thing like a huge white butterfly" and "a579.8 The Time Machine in the New Review, xII (1895), 578-
monstrous crab-like creature" (p. 137). He goes
' The Time Machine is part of a reaction on the part of
on until, thirty million years hence, it appearsmany writers of the late eighties and nineties to the
as if animal life has devolved out of existence. strident optimism that permeated the official rhetoric of the
Plant life has degenerated to "livid green liver-Victorian age. See Bergonzi's discussion of the fin du globe in
worts and lichens" (p. 139). Here he witnesses ahis Early H. G. Wells, pp. 3-14, et passim. Some material may
solar eclipse which prefigures the end of thealso be found in Hillegas' Future as Nightmare (see n. 2 above),
relevant to attitudes towards evolution during the period in
world.
which Wells was writing The Time Machine.

This content downloaded from

157.38.199.86 on Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:06:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
532 "The Time Machine"; or, the Fourth Dimension as Prophecy

discord, this evolutionary antithesis-degradation. theories he has developed to explain the world
("Retrogression," p. 246) of the future derive from what he sees in the

Wells goes on to illustrate "the enormous im- present state of human affairs.
portance of degeneration as a plastic process in Although the Traveller revises his theories as
nature" and its "parity with evolution" by he learns about the nature of the Morlocks, he
giving examples of species which have retro- temporarily settles on an etiological interpreta-
gressed and of vestigial features now observable tion of the relationship between the effete (and
which perhaps presage future degeneration. His virtually androgynous) Eloi and their more
concluding remarks are especially relevant to energetic predators. "The great triumph of
the vision presented in The Time Machine: Humanity I had dreamed of took a different
shape in my mind. It had been no such triumph
There is, therefore, no guarantee in scientific knowl-
of moral education and general co-operation as
edge of man's permanence or permanent ascendancy
. . . The presumption is that before him lies a long
I had imagined. Instead, I saw a real aristocracy,
future of profound modification, but whether this armed with perfected science and working to a
will be, according to his present ideals, upward or logical conclusion the industrial system of to-
downward, no one can forecast. Still, so far as any day. Its triumph had not been simply a triumph
scientist can tell us, it may be that, instead of this, over nature, but a triumph over nature and the
Nature is, in unsuspected obscurity, equipping some fellow-man" (p. 84). To be sure, he himself
now humble creature with wider possibilities of ap- reserves a doubt concerning this account of how
petite, endurance, or destruction, to rise in the fulness the future world had come to be: "My explana-
of time and sweep homo away into the darkness from
tion may be absolutely wrong. I still think it is
which his universe arose. The Coming Beast must
the most plausible one." His ambivalence here
certainly be reckoned in any anticipatory calculations
regarding the Coming Man. ("Retrogression," p. 253) reminds one, not accidentally, of his subsequent
remark as to how the reader may accept this
Clearly this speculation goes beyond the mere vision of the future. "Take it as a lie-or a
softening of the "glare of optimistic evolution" prophecy... Consider I have been speculating
with a "shadow." The "opposite idea" dominates on the destinies of our race, until I have hatched
Wells's imagination-the vision of man's being this fiction" (p. 145). Together, these statements
swept away "into the darkness from which his suggest that any explanation of the imaginary
universe arose"-of "life that... is slowly and world of the Eloi and the Morlocks is important
remorselessly annihilated," as he says in "On only insofar as it makes it clear that the world
Extinction"'0-the vision, in other words, of projected in the fiction is prophecy; that is, the
The Time Machine. And his prophecy of the "working to a logical conclusion" of what can be
"Coming Beast"-in stories like "The Sea observed in the world of the present.
Raiders" (1896), The War of the Worlds (1898), The Time Traveller himself says that he has
and "The Empire of the Ants" (1904), as well arrived at his explanation by extrapolating (to
as in The Time Machine-though more literal appropriate a useful word from the jargon of
than Yeats's vision of the Second Coming-is no science fiction) from tendencies existing in the
less forceful in its dramatic impact. present:
II At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age,
it seemed clear as daylight to me that the gradual
The vision of the future as a devolutionary widening of the present merely temporary and social
process, in reversing the expectations of "op- difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer,
timistic evolution," is not isolated in The Timewas the key to the whole position. No doubt it will
Machine as an imaginative possibility for itsseem grotesque enough to you-and wildly incredible!
own sake. The structure of the world of 802,701, -and yet even now there are existing circumstances to
for instance, suggests a critique of the pastoral point that way. (pp. 81-82; my emphasis)
utopia of Morris' News from Nowhere (1891)
What this passage implies is that the procedure
and other pre-Wellsian utopian romances, since for interpreting the vision of The Time Machine
the idyllic world of the Eloi is quite literallyrecapitulates the process by which the fiction
undermined by the machine-dominated world of
was "hatched"; so that the science-fictional
the Morlocks. Thus the vision of the future in
method of prophecy is itself "the key to the whole
The Time Machine both reflects and evaluates
man's "present ideals," a point that the Time 10 "On Extinction," Chambers's Journal, x (30 Sept. 1893),
Traveller emphasizes by insisting that the 623.

This content downloaded from

157.38.199.86 on Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:06:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Robert M. Philmus 533

position." Moreover, on the evidence of the Refinement of Humanity: A.D. 12,203," the
Traveller's own theories, the future that Wells Philosopher remarks to a doctor in his audience:
has projected does not, precisely speaking, em- You believe that the average height, average weight,
body only the consequences of "the industrial average longevity will all be increased, that in the
system of to-day," but also the consequences of future humanity will breed and sanitate itself into
the ideal which directs the course and uses of
human Megatheria... But... what I saw is just
technological advance. what one might have expected. Man, like other ani-
While they summarily describe a world re- mals, has been moulded, and will be, by the necessities
sulting from man's present ideals, the Timeof his environment. What keeps men so large and so
Traveller's theories are also evaluative. In strong as they are? The fact that if any drop below a
certain level of power and capacity for competition,
saying, for example, that "the great triumph of
they die. Remove dangers, render physical exertion
Humanity. . . had not been simply a triumph
no longer a necessity but an excrescence upon life,
over nature" (as T. H. Huxley had urged") abolish
"but competition by limiting population .. [and
a triumph over nature and the fellow-man," youthe
get degeneration].
Time Traveller makes a negative moral judg- Somewhere between now and then [i.e., 12,203]
ment: "moral education and general co-opera- your sanitary science must have won the battle it is
tion" had not been achieved. And condemnation beginning now.'2
is again entailed in his observation that the
human intellect "had set itself steadfastly towards Here and elsewhere in this early draft Wells
comfort and ease, a balanced society with does not really achieve any degree of detach-
security as its watchword"; for "Only those ment from the Philosopher; but at least pas-
animals partake of intelligence that have to sages such as this help to clarify how a vision
meet a huge variety of needs and dangers" antithetical to "the placid assumption of that
(p. 130). The ideal (perfect security) therefore time that Evolution was a pro-human force"
undermines the means of maintaining it (in-can also illustrate the consequences of an ideal
telligence); and the result, the Traveller con-seemingly inseparable from that assumption-
tinues, is that "the upper-world man had drifted namely, the ideal of evolving towards greater and
towards his feeble prettiness, and the under- greater "comfort and ease."
world to mere mechanical industry. But that As far as the Time Traveller's theories are
perfect state had lacked one thing even for necessary for understanding the prophecy, then,
mechanical perfection-absolute permanency"it is somewhat misleading to say that "This
(pp. 130-131). This final interpretation, which horrible degeneration [of the Eloi and the Mor-
elaborates on and at the same time supersedes locks] has occurred because mankind, as Huxley
his previous explanations, accounts more fully feared, was ultimately unable to control the
for the world of the Eloi and the Morlocks as it cosmic or evolutionary process."'3 Rather, the
obviously impugns man's "present ideals." The Traveller implies, mankind apparently con-
ideal of subjugating man and nature to realize a trolled the cosmic process too well, according to
state of "comfort and ease" is satirically judged an ideal the consequences of which no one could
by projecting its consequences as a vision of the foresee. One of those consequences is that by
future. 802,701 no species has the intelligence any more
Both the Traveller's principle for interpreting to set limits on the struggle for existence, in
the vision and the process by which that vision which the defenseless Eloi fall victim to the
has been arrived at assume, therefore, that carnivorous Morlocks. Among these descendants
man's ideals do affect the course of evolution, of homo sapiens, the struggle for survival-
that the world of 802,701 and beyond is the which, engendered by "Necessity," makes the
"working to a logical conclusion" of man's "absolute permanency" of "mechanical per-
striving for comfort and ease. This point is madefection" impossible-now resumes the character
explicitly in the version of The Time Machine that struggle takes among other animals. "Man,"
published in the National Observer, a version the Traveller reflects, "had been content to live
inferior in conception and structure to that put
out by Heinemann, and one containing more 11 In "Evolution and Ethics" and other essays, Huxley
cross-discussion between the Traveller (referred declares that ethical man can exist only if he modifies the
to as the Philosopher) and his fictive audience "cosmic process."
""The Refinement of Humanity," National Observer,
than Wells finally (and rightly) decided was N.S., xi (21 Apr. 1894), 581-582.
necessary. In the serialized episode called "The 3 Hillegas, "Cosmic Pessimism," p. 658.

This content downloaded from

157.38.199.86 on Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:06:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 534 "The Time Machine"; or, the Fourth Dimension as Prophecy

in ease and delight upon the labours of his future. On the contrary, the reactions typifying
fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watch- the attitude of the audience are the skepticism
word and excuse, and in the fulness of time of the Medical Man, who wants to analyze the
Necessity had come home to him" (pp. 105-106). flowers that the Traveller has brought back
And once this "Necessity" reasserts itself, once, with him, and the arrant disbelief of the Editor,
that is to say, man's descendants begin reverting who considers the Traveller's account a "gaudy
to beasts, anthropomorphic life, according to the lie" (p. 148). Only the unidentified narrator of
vision of The Time Machine, is irrevocably on the entire Time Machine lies "awake most of the
the downward path of devolution. night thinking about it."
In fact, the Time Traveller himself does not
III
seem to be wholly cognizant of the implications
This vision of social disintegration of and his theories. If his etiology is correct, the
devolution as a critique of the ideal of striving
cause of the degeneration he discovers exists in
towards "ease and delight" can exist only the
in the
present. Therefore, the burden of what he
dimension of prophecy, that dimension into
calls "moral education" remains here and now;
which the critique can be projected and imagina-
and his return to the world of 802,701 would
tively given life-the world, in other words,
appearofto be either a romantic evasion and of a
science fantasy.'4 The fourth dimension pieceaswith
a the sentimental "squirms of idyllic
dimension in time is thus a metaphor: itpetting"
is the that V. S. Pritchett finds embarrassing,16
dimension open to the imagination.or"Our a pessimistic retreat from a world "that must
mental existences, which are immaterial and fall back upon and destroy its makers"
inevitably
have no dimensions, are passing along the In any case, the Traveller's point of
(p. 152).
Time-Dimension" (p. 6), the Traveller had saidthough more comprehensive than that of
view,
in introducing his audience to the concept
the of
other characters, is still limited; and this lim-
this new dimension. As a world whereinitation
the has its structural correlative in the fact
consequences of the accepted ideal can that
be en-
his narrative is related secondhand, as it
visioned, the fourth dimension provides were,athree years after his disappearance, and
critical and comprehensive point of viewcomprises
from only a part-albeit a large part-of
which to evaluate the present. the fiction.
That at the beginning of The Time Machine That the structure of The Time Machine en-
no one except the Time Traveller has conceived compasses, and thereby defines the limits of, the
of-or even can conceive of-this dimension Traveller's point of view indicates that the ro-
already indicates a lack of imaginative (and mance follows an inner logic of its own, a logic,
critical) awareness on the part of his audience.
like that governing the Time Traveller's vision,
His argument for a fourth dimension, prefaced which compels ultimate consequences from a
by the caveat that "I shall have to controvert given premise. Accordingly, the logic which ne-
one or two ideas that are almost universally
cessitates the Traveller's vanishing into the
accepted" (pp. 1-2), meets with incompre- world of his vision depends upon how he accepts
hension and complacent skepticism. Quite pre-that vision. His insistence that "The story I told
dictably, his audience fails to take seriously-if
you was true" (p. 148) implies that he takes his
the point is grasped at all-the relevance of theprophecy literally, that he allows it the same
Time Traveller's vision. No one else seems to ontological status that he himself has. Thus to
connect the vision of "The two species that had dramatize the assertion that his tale is literally
resulted from the evolution of man . . .sliding true, he must go back into the world of the future:
down towards, or.. . already arrived at, ansince he cannot accept it as fiction, as an invented
altogether new relationship" (p. 97) with his
preconception of an "inevitable tendency to 14 As late as Men Like Gods (1923), the utopian fantasy that
higher and better things" ("Retrogression,"takes place in the "F dimension," Wells has one of his charac-
p. 247). Perhaps no one in the audience takes
ters say of another (neither has yet been initiated into
this vision seriously because, as Wells speculatedUtopia): "He has always had too much imagination. He
thinks that things that don't exist can exist. And now he
elsewhere, "It is part of the excessive egotism of
imagines himself in some sort of scientific romance and out of
the human animal that the bare idea of its ex- our world altogether" (Men Like Gods, New York, 1923,
pp. 21-22).
tinction seems incredible to it."'s Certainly there
is no sign that anyone among the listeners sees 15 "The Extinction of Man," Certain Personal Matters
(London, 1898 [1897]), p. 172. This essay first appeared in
how, or that, this vision implicates his present the Pall Mall Gazette for 23 Sept. 1894.
ideals, which are responsible for the shape of the 16 The Living Novel (London, 1946), p. 119.

This content downloaded from

157.38.199.86 on Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:06:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Robert M. Philmus 535

metaphor, he must disappear into the dimension contained in "working to a logical conclusion"
where his vision "exists." The demand that his both the myth of devolution that exposes ten-
vision be literally true, in other words, requires
dencies "of our own age" and the various points
that the Traveller be no more real than it is; of
andview regarding the truth of that prophetic
his return to that world fulfills this demand. myth.
In being subsumed in his vision, however, he According to this interpretation, Wells's ex-
also renders it no less real than any member ofperiment in fiction is comparable in the artistry
the fictive audience; so that one is forced to give of its narrative to the contemporaneous experi-
the same degree of credibility to the futuristicments of, say Joseph Conrad, who also wrote
fantasy as to the contemporary scene in whichtales "told in quotation marks""7 and who found
the Traveller relates his story. What the reader is in Wells an early admirer; and for the complexity
left with, that is, is the prophecy, the metaphori- of its structure and point of view, The Time Ma-
cal truth which mediates between the blind and
chine deserves the praise that Henry James in
fact bestowed on it.18
complacent optimism evidenced by the fictive
audience and the resultant devolution envisioned
LOYOLA COLLEGE
by the Time Traveller.
Montreal, Canada
The Traveller's return to the world of 802,701,
far from vitiating the impact of The Time Ma- 17 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, N. J.,
chine, reinforces its claim to integrity: by having 1957), pp. 202-203.
the Time Traveller act out the ultimate conse- 18 On 21 Jan. 1900, James wrote to Wells: "It was very
quence of his taking a prophetic myth literally,graceful of you to send me your book-I mean the particular
masterpiece entitled The Time Machine, after I had so un-
Wells illustrates the rigor that he has submitted
gracefully sought it at your hands" (Henry James and H. G.
himself to in satirizing certain "present ideals."
Wells, ed. Leon Edel and Gordon N. Ray, Urbana, Ill.,
The romance, as I see it, is thus rigorously self-
1958, p. 63).

This content downloaded from

157.38.199.86 on Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:06:12 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms