The Arab saw the wild combat of genii, whom the great Solomon had not subdued. Woe to the luckless wight who should arouse their ill-will! The Arabian Nights tell us of a contest between one of these spirits of fire and a beautiful princess, versed in magic. The swarthy Moor beheld the hand of God, waving on his angels to contest with the hosts of evil: and the same idea of wild combat in the spirit world is found in the myths of the Caribs and Lapps. In the Hindoo cosmogony, the lightning and storm are the chief weapons of Siva, the destroyer, who will one day blot the world out of existence. Only in the red man’s tales do we find the idea of the Christian world, of one Great Spirit who rules all nature. In the Persian mythology, lightning and gloom represent the contest between the forces of Ahriman, prince of evil, and Ormuzd, the great creator and preserver of good. And among the old Etruscans, from whom the Romans borrowed many rites and ceremonies, the lightning was one of the chief objects in their system of augury and divination. A favorable flash of lightning outweighed all portents of ill. The thunder was the voice of the gods, communicating their will to men. And so the ancients were content to pass the mystery by, unsolved. Now and then a Pliny, a Seneca, an Aristotle, ventured a timid speculation upon the origin and cause of lightning, but as electricity was an unknown force to them, their conjectures were as wild as the chimærical tales of Cimmerian darkness in ultra-Scythian realms, or of the Utopian haven of bliss, where the Hyperboreans dwelt. But one of their various conjectures is worthy of note, as it contains an element of truth. It was, that the lightning was produced by mutual friction or violent concussion of the clouds.