Now we have Babylon, and a long time further on we reach the cavemen

Now, since we are flying faster than the speed of light, historical events are enacted before our eyes. True, we see the result before we see the cause; but our point of view becomes only the more philosophic by that reversal. All the historic disputes are settled. So it was Homer (not another man named Homer) who wrote the epics!

Now we have Babylon, and a long time further on we reach the cavemen. "Would you like to see a dinosaur?" our pilot asks. Personally, we should like that very much, but the others of our party are becoming nervous. They cannot quite believe that the world they left is still there, quite intact, and very conscious of the twentieth century. They would rather turn back. So the pilot decelerates his plane, and the later light rays, which we have passed, begin to catch up with us again. History comes up in its proper order. We see surveyors taking observations on the Sun and laying out the pyramids. We could not ask greater accuracy of a modern surveyor laying out grounds with the help of all his instruments. This history at last has the perfection toward which all history should strive; we feel as though we were living in those times.

As we slow down, we see the Barbarian hosts ransacking the proud city of Rome, while cramped in a cell Dionysius Exiguus studies imperfect old records to determine when Christ was born. From his work all our own chronology dates, but we never saw him before. Another deceleration and we are in the midst of astrologers who inform us that this is not a propitious day to start business. They are a great convenience. While they are around, the professional man, caught by a persistent and non-paying cilent, on a beautiful afternoon, need not make the customary apology: "I'm sorry that I can't attend to your business, but it just happens that I have a very important conference with Messrs. Bunker, Ball and Green to decide an important question on the outskirts of town." He need only point to his astrolabe and state firmly: "Sorry the planets are unpropitious today. In ten days they will have changed, possibly for the better. You might come back and see me at that time." The client could have no possible answer to make, and the businessman can proceed to his game of golf with a clear conscience.

Chaucer tells of a customer who entered a barber shop and inquired whether it was a good time to have a hair cut. The barber solemnly took out his astrolabe, observed the Sun, and replied that there were no unpropitious signs. Thereupon the customer sat down and was tonsured.

At present a flight such as we have just taken is possible only in our imagination. The difficulties of an actual voyage are immense, yet, for the first time, the way of such physical flight has at least been suggested. We need only a few inventions: the comet plane, the gigantic telescope, a few odds and ends such as air tanks and heaters which will still work in the absolute zero of interstellar, airless space. When those obstacles are overcome we can treat time as a dimension, and, flying backward through it, solve all the historical riddles that the world has ever known.

The language problem will have to be solved, and then there is the leisurely manner of communication. Eighty years must pass before we can have a response from Arcturus, and that is a neighborly star, not to be compared in distance with some of the others. Yet there might be commercial possibilities in such communication. Messages, for instance, might be sent as christening presents, so that the child might have the triumph of a reply in his old age.

The curious thing is that so far no one has suggested a scientific way of flying forward in time. We progress in that direction in the normal course of life, and the spiritualists believe in foresight by dreams or prophetic visions. A great many novels, such as The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells or Huxley Brave New World, have been written around such a theme, but the scientific method of flight has yet to be propounded. Someday someone will probably think up the necessary conditions; but let us all hope, for the sake of our sanity, that they will not depend upon a fifth dimension. We have all we can do to understand the fourth.

Likewise its scope is unknown. History goes back seven thousand years or more. According to the best authorities, some geological structures were millions of years in formation. The solar system has been in existence for at least thousands of millions of years; and we can measure the distance of stars 150,000,000 light years away. Obviously they have been throwing their light rays out into the universe for a period as long. It follows from this that they may have disappeared or suddenly and wonderfully vanished away 149,000,000 years ago, and we shall have to wait another million years before we receive tidings of their disappearance. Merciful indeed is the world for being so small. Puck was prepared to girdle the Earth in forty seconds. He was too slow. The electric current of the telegraph, telephone and radio threw that girdle in much less than one second.

"I know what time is, if no one asks me," confessed Saint Augustine, "but if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I know not." We may all echo his words. The actual nature of time remains unknown. But we can at least measure this unknown quantity; and an enormous amount of man's ingenuity has been expended in gauging those measurements.

Time marches on.