We must begin by finding out the exact facts, which are extraordinary enough to captivate our attention. The theories will follow.
CHAPTER V
THE EFFECTS OF LIGHTNING ON MANKIND
The destructive work of lightning in every form is immense. A formidable and invisible world skirts the earth—an enchanted world, more wonderful than any Eastern legend—an unknown ocean, whose immaterial presence is constantly brought before us by the most fearful electric conflagrations.
Even to-day the brilliancy of lightning hides itself from us in the darkness of impenetrable mystery. But we feel that there is an immeasurable power, an unimaginable force which rules us.
We are, in fact, but puny beings in comparison with this magic force, and the ancients were wise when they made the King of the Gods responsible for the actions of lightning. He alone in His splendour and sovereignty could exercise such an empire over our modest planet—above all, over man's imagination.
Science slowly follows the centuries in their ascending march towards progress. At present our knowledge of ball lightning is limited, and we have only the principal facts of nature to contribute to the elucidation of the problem.
In increasing our observations, and in comparing those which are analogous, we may hope, if not to arrive at an immediate conclusion, at least to help in the work of discovering what laws govern this subtle and imponderable fluid.
Here it will strike a man dead without leaving a trace; there it will only attack the clothes and insinuate itself as far as the skin without even grazing it. It will burn the lining of a garment, and leave the material of which it is made intact. Sometimes it profits by the bewilderment caused by its dazzling light to entirely undress a person, and leave him naked and inanimate, but with no external wound, not even a scratch.