Part of a Mind

Can a spell be created to affect part of a mind as a Part target?
I've been considering a spell to understand a wolf's cry, and one of the ideas is that you can change your faculty of understaning language so that you understand animal, rather than human, speech. I figured this differs from "Mind of the Beast" in that you only affect Part of the mind, thus allowing for free, human, thought.
Am I thinking straight?

Here is the spell in question:

Harnessed Mind of the Beast, MuMe (req: An) 25
R: Personal, D: Concentration, T: Part
You change your understanding of language to that of an animal of your choice. You can understand the speech of this animal, but human languages sound like animalistic, meaningless, grunts.
(Base 15, +1 Concentration, +1 Part)

Does the paradigm allow the compartmentalisation of the mind?

The paradigm? Yes. The rules? I'm not sure.

Aritotle certainly divided the mind, as did Plato and the other ancients. The egyptians had an elaborate division of the soul/mind/spirit, some parts of which may be subject to influence by Hermetic magic. I see no problem with having different parts within the mind.

Granted, none of these parts are the "understanding of langauge" bit. Although it may be possible to say it is an aristotelean neccessary quality of the mind, with apostriori values (like an object always has color, but can have different colors, so a mind always knows a langauge, language, but can know differfent languages). I believe the speculation over the existence of an "Adamite" langugae, a pure language that develops when a baby is not "corrupted" by being tought another, is a bit later than the cannon. I may be mistaken.

An Individual target, now, is fairly clear in that it relates to a body part or so on. I'm not at all certain the rules allow for the more abstract "part of a mind" concept.

"I believe the speculation over the existence of an "Adamite" langugae, a pure language that develops when a baby is not "corrupted" by being tought another, is a bit later than the cannon. I may be mistaken"

I think emperor Frederick II (1194-1250) made an "experiment" of raising children with no one allowed to talk to them in order to discover which language they would eventually speak.

I also recall having read somewhere that medieval theologians thought that the adamite first language would probably be Hebrew, the language of the Patriarchs, but not sure on this.

Oh. Cool, and in period. Amazing.
I wonder what these children will speak in Ars Magica... I'm having wild notions of innocent, naive children invoking the Words of Creation.... something from the Zohar, perhaps...

As an hebrew speaker, עברית שפה קשה (Hebrew language is difficult; yes, the order of the words is backwards, it's on purpose). We get it wrong even with learning.. :unamused:

The originator of this story is Salimbene da Parma, a Franciscan Spiritualis deeply involved in Joachimite speculation, who was quite disappointed not only with Federico II, but also with Joachim da Fiore, when the emperor died without revealing himself to be the Antichrist.
That lurid story, one of the many circulating about the emperor during his lifetime, is only useful to show what contemporaries of his thought him capable of.
What an ArM SG thinks the stupor mundi capable of need of course not only be determined by history ...

Kind regards,

Berengar

This same story appears in Herotodus. The children don't die in that version (as they do in the later version with the King of Scots, and with Frederick) and one of the children comes to the sailors who fetch him saying "becos" and pointing to his mouth, demonstrating the Egyptians to be the oldest race in the world, because "becos" is Egyptian for "bread".