CHAPTER VII

IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN


The most distinctively modern thing that ever happened was when Benjamin
Franklin went out one day and called down lightning from heaven. Before
that, power had always been dug up, or scraped off the ground. The more
power you wanted the more you had to get hold of the ground and dig for
it; and the more solid you were, the more heavy, solid things you could
get, the more you could pull solid, heavy things round in this world
where you wanted them. Franklin turned to the sky, and turned power on
from above, and decided that the real and the solid and the substantial
in this world was to be pulled about by the Invisible.

Copernicus had the same idea, of course, when he fared forth into space,
and discovered the centre of all power to be in the sun. It grieved
people a good deal to find how much more important the sky was than they
were, and their whole little planet with all of them on it. The idea
that that big blue field up there, empty by day and with such crowds of
little faint dots in it all night, was the real thing--the big, final,
and important thing--and that they and their churches and popes and
pyramids and nations should just dance about it for millions of years
like a mote in a sunbeam, hurt their feelings at first. But it did them
good. It started them looking Up, and looking the other way for power.

Very soon afterward Columbus enlarged upon the same idea by starting the
world toward very far things, on the ground; and he bored through the