230 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



further we go back into the past the Languages 

 become thinner and thinner, the words fewer and 

 fewer, the grammar poorer and poorer. Of the 

 thousand known Languages it has been found pos- 

 sible to reduce all to three or four — probably three 

 — great families ; and each of these in turn is 

 capable of almost unlimited philological pruning. 

 In analyzing the Sanskrit language, Professor Max 

 Miiller reduces its whole vocabulary to 121 roots 

 — the 121 "original concepts." "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 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." ^ 



That a " first attempt " should have succeeded in 

 reducing this vast family of Languages to 121 

 words is significant. The exhumation by philo- 

 * Science of Thought^ p. 549. 



