Now it is unfortunate that, so far as scientific discoveries form the Spirit of the Age, they do so at second-hand. The _Origin of Species_ happens to be easy to read, but even so that body of thought known as “Darwinism” owes its influence chiefly to such expositors as Huxley and Tyndall. The thing becomes set; it assumes hard, bold outlines; the issue has to be presented with something of the simplicity of an election cry. The universe of Science becomes finally a universe from which all mystery is banished and where the only ultimates are small, incompressible spheres whose movements and combinations produce--everything. The chasm separating this conclusion from the actual scientific evidence is not realised. Very tentative and almost fantastic hypotheses become dogmas, and it is as dogmas that they become influences. As a matter of fact the scientific evidence, even of Darwin’s day, suggested quite other possibilities than those popularised as a “materialistic” philosophy. James Clerk Maxwell, who had a profounder insight into physical reality than any other man of his time, in a very little known essay, draws attention to the “singularities” characteristic of certain natural phenomena, and suggests that there are more singular points the higher the rank of the existence. “At these points, influences whose physical magnitude is too small to be taken account of by a finite being, may produce results of the greatest importance,” and he warns his readers against “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.”