ROOTS OF LANGUAGE, ^^1 



"These 121 concepts constitute the stock-in-trade with 

 which I maintain that every thought that has ever passed 

 through the mind of India, so far as it is known to us in its 

 literature, has been expressed. It would have been easy 

 to reduce that number still further, for there are several 

 among them which could be ranged together under more 

 general concepts. But I leave this further reduction to 

 others, being satisfied as a first attempt with having shown 

 how small a number of seeds may produce, and has 

 produced, the enormous intellectual vegetation that has 

 covered the soil of India from the most distant antiquity 

 to the present day." * 



Now, the first thing which strikes one on reading this list 

 is, that it unquestionably justifies the inference of its compiler, 

 namely, " if the Science of Language has proved anything, it 

 has proved that every term which is applied to a particular idea 

 or object (unless it be a proper name) is already a general term." 

 But the next thing which immediately strikes one is that the 

 list, surprisingly short as it is, nevertheless is much too long to 

 admit of being interpreted as, in any intelligible sense of 

 the words, an inventory of " original concepts " — unless by 

 " original " we are to understand the ultimate results of 

 philological analysis. That all these concepts are not 

 " original " in the sense of representing the ideation of really 

 primitive man, is abundantly proved by two facts. 



The first is that fully a third of the whole number might 

 be dispensed with, and yet leave no important blank in the 

 already limited resources of the list for the purposes either of 

 communication or reflection. To yawn, to spew, to vomit, 

 to sweat, and so on, are not forms of activity of any such 



• 



Science of Thought^ p. 549* 



