FACULTIES OF THE MIND. 287 
much more powerfully in the production of different lan- 
guages, than varieties in the structure of the organs em- 
ployed, or rather that organical differences exercise but 
feeble mfluence, we may state, that our capability of learn- 
ing to speak a strange language, does not depend on any 
peculiar provincial or national structure of the organs, ori- 
ginating in a peculiar state of the larynx, and strengthen- 
ed by the custom and habits of generations. There is not 
one erganical conformation qualifying one to speak Ger- 
man, another to speak French, and a third to speak Eng- 
lish. The organs of these nations are the same, and their 
capabilities the same. There is no predisposition to speak 
one language more than another. Hence, although we 
admit the complicated nature of the vocal organs, and the 
constitutional differences which they exhibit, we perceive 
that these offer no obstacle to the acquisition of any lan- 
guage, since, in the words of one of the most celebrated 
anatomists of the age, who nevertheless is disposed. to refer 
the variety of languages chiefly to circumstances connected 
with the vocal organs, “ all children acquire the tones, 
accents, and articulations of those countries in which they 
are educated ; an evident proof, that, prior to the forma- 
tion of habits, the vocal muscles may be brought to act in 
any one of the numerous millions of combinations that have 
ever been adopted by any tribe, family, or nation of the 
human race, and be made to acquire the habit of pronoun- 
cing, with readiness and ease, any one of the almost infinite 
variety of languages that have been, that are, or that ever 
shall be on the face of the glebe *.” Since, then, the con- 
dition of the organs exercises but a feeble influence in the 

* A New Anatomical Nomenclature by Joun Barcray, M.D. Edin. 
1803, p. 79. 
