THE SUPERSTITION OF THE BELLS. 593 



aret of the mosque of Mahomet. Good people, in their 

 zeal for their convictions, retorted that the presence of the 

 infernal contrivance deconsecrated the lofty spire and in- 

 vited its destruction; and this not only because of the 

 affront offered the celestial powers, but for the purely 

 physical reason that the lightning sought the conductor, 

 and so became directly attracted to the place which other- 

 wise it might harmlessly pass by. The failure of some of 

 the first-erected rods to protect, through defective construc- 

 tion or imperfect earth connections, gave color to these 

 arguments. Nevertheless, the spikes bristled on the pin- 

 nacles, and man learned " to sleep fearless of the thunder." 



The epoch of the intellectual rise which I seek to chron- 

 icle, here reaches its end. The establishment of the iden- 

 tity of electricity and lightning marks its conclusion, and 

 at the same time brings to culmination the long series of 

 events whereby the single incomprehensible effect observed 

 in the lodestone and the amber gradually grew into recog- 

 nition as a world force, subject to universal law and per- 

 vading all nature. It had lived and persisted and grown 

 mighty, steadily rising over all antagonisms, even as the 

 points of Franklin's rods reared themselves toward the 

 clouds, far above the jarring clangor of the bells. 



"Vivos voco, 

 Mortuos plango, 

 Fulgurafrango, ' ' 



sang the resounding throats in the steeples as of old, while 

 the lightning, laughing at their vociferations, silently and 

 safely followed the slender iron to the ground. 



"The truth of science has ever had not merely the task 

 of evolving herself from the dull and uniform mist of 

 ignorance, but also that of repressing and dissolving the 

 phantoms of the imagination, which ever rise up in new 

 and tempting shapes, and which, not being of her, crowd 

 38 



