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Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists by Leslie Stephen;William Ewart Gladstone;Edward A. Freeman;James Anthony Froude;John Henry Newman
page 44 of 199 (22%)
the emotions are there all the same, and they do their work all the
same. The most highly educated man in the most highly educated society
cannot sneer them out of being.

But it is time to pass to the more strictly scientific aspect of the
subject. The doctrine of race, in its popular form, is the direct
offspring of the study of scientific philology; and yet it is just now,
in its popular form at least, somewhat under the ban of scientific
philologers. There is nothing very wonderful in this. It is in fact the
natural course of things which might almost have been reckoned on
beforehand. When the popular mind gets hold of a truth, it seldom gets
hold of it with strict scientific precision. It commonly gets hold of
one side of the truth; it puts forth that side of the truth only. It
puts that side forth in a form which may not be in itself distorted or
exaggerated, but which practically becomes distorted and exaggerated,
because other sides of the same truth are not brought into their due
relation with it. The popular idea thus takes a shape which is naturally
offensive to men of strict precision, and which men of strict scientific
precision have naturally, and from their own point of view quite
rightly, risen up to rebuke. 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
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