Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/54

 born; in the mind they dwell and have their being; but in the brain a mysterious mechanism gives them currency.

A curious characteristic of this mechanism—one that identifies it as a mechanism—is that it can not turn out indifferently the product of two languages. Each language requires its own anatomical area. The group of cells educated for English, for instance, can not be made to turn out another language. Each language must have its own group of cells. This has been demonstrated clinically in the study of injuries to the brains of polyglots. A man knowing several languages may have the area of one destroyed and retain the others. These areas are so intimately related, however, that harm done to the group of cells built up for one language is very likely to damage the other groups; although in the reports of Hinshelwood, of the University of Glasgow, it is recorded that a patient retained his Greek perfectly, his Latin less well, and that he was progressively weaker in