578 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



From the bold conjectures of Wall or Gray or Hanks- 

 bee? From the fruitless hypotheses of Winkler or Freke 

 no better, if as good as his own? From Nollet's wish 

 that somebody would attempt the test? Do not all the 

 prophecies after the event which Franklin's detractors 

 have solemnly made on the strength of these prior specula- 

 tions seem destitute of substantial basis ? 



Whether Franklin at the outset fully realized the mag- 

 nitude of the consequences depending upon the resolution 

 of the question, may be doubted. A more emotional 

 nature than his might have done so and been overwhelmed 

 when success became apparent. As it was, he probably 

 never looked upon himself as one set apart to dispel a 

 terror of the ages, to destroy the power of a scourge which 

 had lashed all humanity since the world was peopled: he 

 was prosaically trying to utilize the new knowledge. 

 Furthermore, if there is any one characteristic of the man 

 which shines forth in all his writings, at least until great 

 age weakened his faculties, it is that of thinking straight. 

 He sees the problem before him clean and clear he never 

 loses sight of it he never grows misty or confused he 

 makes for the goal steadily, persistently, and by what 

 seems to him to be the most direct path. And, at the 

 very threshold, he differs from European philosophers. 



Look back at their experiments and their theories. 

 Every one of them has his eyes fixed on his globes and his 

 jars. Every one of them is making the electricity which 

 he produces the model. Every one of them is hunting 

 for resemblances to the lightning in exhausted receivers or 

 on the edges of wet tea cups, or in his little circuits. And 

 the most they got out of it all was that the little sparks 

 and the little crackles and the little glow and the light- 

 ning seemed to be of the same "nature" the meaning- 

 less answer of both the ignorant and the philosopher. 

 Their question was is electricity lightning in miniature? 



Such Franklin did not do. He turned from the bottles 

 and the wires and looked straight into the face of Nature. 



