Lightning, now, is a common
thing that one reads about wearily in the books on electricity, a mere
ordinary matter of positive and negative, density and potential, to be
measured in ohms (whatever they may be), and partially imitated with
Leyden jars and red sealing-wax apparatus. Why, did not Benjamin
Franklin, a fat old gentleman in ill-fitting small clothes, bring it
down from the clouds with a simple door-key, somewhere near
Philadelphia? and does not Mr. Robert Scott (of the Meteorological
Office) calmly predict its probable occurrence within the next
twenty-four hours in his daily report, as published regularly in the
morning papers? This is lightning, mere vulgar lightning, a simple
result of electrical conditions in the upper atmosphere, inconveniently
connected with algebraical formulas in _x_, _y_, _z_, with horrid
symbols interspersed in Greek letters. But the real thunderbolts of
Jove, the weapons that the angry Zeus, or Thor, or Indra hurls down upon
the head of the trembling malefactor--how infinitely grander, more
fearsome, and more mysterious!
And yet even nowadays, I believe, there are a large number of
well-informed people, who have passed the sixth standard, taken prizes
at the Oxford Local, and attended the dullest lectures of the Society
for University Extension, but who nevertheless in some vague and dim
corner of their consciousness retain somehow a lingering faith in the
existence of thunderbolts.
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