"Герберт Уэллс. The Time Machine (Машина времени, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

`Scientific people,' proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause
required for the proper assimilation of this, `know very well that Time is
only a kind of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram, a weather
record. This line I trace with my finger shows the movement of the
barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then this
morning it rose again, and so gently upward to here. Surely the mercury did
not trace this line in any of the dimensions of Space generally recognized?
But certainly it traced such a line, and that line, therefore, we must
conclude was along the Time-Dimension.'

`But,' said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, `if
Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why has it
always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot we move in
Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?'

The Time Traveller smiled. `Are you sure we can move freely in Space?
Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough, and men
always have done so. I admit we move freely in two dimensions. But how
about up and down? Gravitation limits us there.'

`Not exactly,' said the Medical Man. `There are balloons.'

`But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the
inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical movement.'
`Still they could move a little up and down,' said the Medical Man.

`Easier, far easier down than up.'

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

`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.'

`But the great difficulty is this,' interrupted the Psychologist. `You
CAN move about in all directions of Space, but you cannot move about in
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