"'After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of to-day are still in the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but a little department of the field of human disease, but even so, it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they can. We improve our favourite plants and animals—and how few they are—gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organized, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. The whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co-operating; things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature. In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit our human needs.'" (Chapter 4)

At this point in Wells's The Time Machine, the Time Traveller is describing his first impressions of the future. And the future looks good at a first glance. No one gets sick; there are no gnats, no weeds, and no fungi; and no one has to work or struggle for anything. In fact, it seems like everything is flowers and butterflies.

Too Much Progress

As futuristic as the future is, we're on the fast track towards it. The Time Traveller imagines that the future is basically just the "better organized, and still better" version of the 19th century. The Victorians had already seen huge leaps in technology, medicine, and living conditions. So the Time Traveller figures that he's now reached the endgame of all that progress—utopia.

As the Time Traveller figures it, humans have battled nature, and they've finally won. Now they get to sit back, eat some fruit, and watch the butterflies.

The style of this passage really drives home the idea of progress: the adjectives and adverbs are all moving to exaggeration ("very," "better," "sweeter," "larger," "faster"). But as the plot goes on, this initial hunch needs revising. The Time Traveller realizes that all this progress can have a major side effect: what if people need to struggle and go to battle? What if that's what makes us better? If this is sounding like Darwin's Theory of Human Evolution: The Novel—well, you might be right. Darwin's theory gave new value to struggle: competition is supposed to force progress.