Yet it may often happen that, while the
scientific statement is the only true one for scientific purposes, the
popular version may also have a kind of practical truth for the somewhat
rough and ready purposes of a popular version. In our present case
scientific philologers are beginning to complain, with perfect truth and
perfect justice from their own point of view, that the popular doctrine
of race confounds race and language. They tell us, and they do right to
tell us, that language is no certain test of race, that men who speak
the same tongue are not therefore necessarily men of the same blood.
And they tell us further, that from whatever quarter the alleged popular
confusion came, it certainly did not come from any teaching of
scientific philologers.
The truth of all this cannot be called in question. We have too many
instances in recorded history of nations laying aside the use of one
language and taking to the use of another, for any one who cares for
accuracy to set down language as any sure test of race. In fact, the
studies of the philologer and those of the ethnologer strictly so called
are quite distinct, and they deal with two wholly different sets of
phenomena.
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