The time machine novel questions ch1&2

We see evidence of this "advanced" society immediately in "The Time Machine." The men gather in a Victorian salon over dinner to discuss ideas of the day, a luxury they can afford as members of the elite class. Moreover, they have been refined into increasingly complex and evolved "sub-species" of man: they are all defined by their professions, and even these professions are specialized (two kinds of doctors, for the mind and body, and a mayor of a province). The TT, also defined by his "profession" of time travel, appears to be the ultimate social scientist who uses "experimental verification" to test his hypotheses.

The Dinner Guests

Though they all basically function as one character, the Medicine Man and the Psychologist stand out among the Time Traveler's dinner guests in their scientific appraisals (and critiques) of his time-travel theories. They also are reminders of Victorian luxury, able to gather for a leisurely evening of discussion. Their skepticism of the TT's story seems to rest less on the implausibility of a Time Machine, and more on the TT's vision of the class-divided future. The dinner guests ignore that they are on their way to becoming the dependent Eloi and that the working class around them is turning into the Morlocks. Wells uses them as a counterpoint to the narrator, with whom we instantly side; we should follow the idealistic narrator in his desire to change the present for the benefit of the future, rather than the cynical dinner guests who complacently go about their present business.

Among the guests are the Medical Man, the Psychologist), the Provincial Mayor, Filby, the Editor, and the Journalist.