Some words are usually singular, though they are plural in form. Examples of these are, optics, economics, physics, mathematics, politics, and many branches of learning; also news, pains (care), molasses, summons, means: as,—
FOR THE USE OF HIGH SCHOOL
Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
This is a poetic usage, though not confined to verse.
Since words alter their meaning so rapidly by a widening or narrowing of their application, we shall find numerous examples of this shifting from class to class;
In the more simple state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons disdains a base submission to the will of a master.—Gibbon.
The words preceded by the article a, or made plural, are still names of abstract ideas, not material things; but they widen the application to separate kinds of art or different branches of science.
Material nouns and abstract nouns are always singular.