444 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XIV. 



he sings his songs to a heavy heart. The ill-timed 

 admonition hardens the heart, and the good resolution, taken 

 when it is sure to be broken, becomes macadamised into 

 pavement for the abyss. 



It appears then that in our own nature there are more 

 singular points, where prediction, except from absolutely 

 perfect data, and guided by the omniscience of contingency, 

 becomes impossible, than there are in any lower organisation. 

 But singular points are by their very nature isolated, and 

 form no appreciable fraction of the continuous course of our 

 existence. Hence predictions of human conduct may be 

 made in many cases. First, with respect to those who have 

 no character at all, especially when considered in crowds, 

 after the statistical method. Second, with respect to in- 

 dividuals of confirmed character, with respect to actions 

 of the kind for which their character is confirmed. 



If, therefore, those cultivators of physical science from 

 whom the intelligent public deduce their conception of the 

 physicist, and whose style is recognised as marking with a 

 scientific stamp the doctrines they promulgate, are led in pur- 

 suit of the arcana of science to the study of the singularities 

 and instabilities, rather than the continuities and stabilities 

 of things, the promotion of natural knowledge may tend to 

 remove that prejudice in favour of determinism which seems 

 to arise from assuming that the physical science of the 

 future is a mere magnified image of that of the past. 



II. 



ON MODIFIED ASPECTS OF PAIN. 



31st October 1876. 



We often make sensation in general the subject of dis- 

 cussion, but it does not appear that we think much about 

 particular sensations. If we did, we should have had more 

 names for them. Most of the words which seem at first 

 sight to be names of sensations are really used as names 

 of objects which we suppose to be associated with the sensa- 

 tion, and to be indicated by it. All such words as hot and 



