3 o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



be discriminated. In the first place there are those ethnic condi- 

 tions existing now, or at any other point in time, whereby the 

 individuals of mankind are grouped into categories of different 

 comprehension, as clans or families, as tribes or groups of allied 

 clans, and as nations, the inhabitants of restricted areas under 

 one political organization. This side of our subject constitutes 

 ethnology. 



In the second place, the individuals of mankind may be re- 

 garded as the descendants of a limited number of original parents, 

 and consequently each person has his place on the genealogical 

 tree of humanity. As the successive branches became in their 

 dispersion subjected to the influences of diverse environments, 

 they have eventually differentiated in characteristics. To each of 

 these subdivisions of the phylum thus differentiated the name 

 race may appropriately be restricted, and the sum of the peculiari- 

 ties of each race may be termed race-characters. This is the 

 phylogenetic * side of anthropology, and its nomenclature should 

 be kept clearly separate from that of the ethnological side. The 

 great and growing literature of anthropology consists largely of 

 the records of attempts to discover and formulate these distinctive 

 race-characters. Race and tribe may be terms of equal extension, 

 but the standpoint from which these categories are viewed is es- 

 sentially different in the two cases. 



There is yet a third series of names in common use in de- 

 scriptive anthropology. The languages in use among men are 

 unfortunately numerous, and as the component individuals in 

 each community usually speak a common language, the mistake 

 is often made of confounding the tribal name with that of the 

 tribal language. Sometimes these categories are coextensive ; 

 but it is not always so, for it is a matter of history that com- 

 munities have been led to adopt new languages from considera- 

 tions quite independent of phylogenetic or ethnic conditions. 

 These linguistic terms should not be confounded with the names 

 in either of the other series, for, as my learned predecessor once 

 said in a presidential address, it is as absurd to speak of an Aryan 

 skull as it would be to say that a family spoke a brachycephalic 

 language. 



In the one clan there may be, by intermarriage, the representa- 

 tives of different races ; in the one nation there may be dissimilar 

 tribes, each derived by composite lines of ancestry from divergent 

 phyla, yet all speaking the same language. 



We have an excellent illustration of the confusion resulting 

 from this disregard of precision in the case of the word Celtic, a 

 term which has sometimes been employed as an ethnic, sometimes 



* Pertaining to lines of descent. 



