Fall_, c. 55. [It is very doubtful whether the idea of 'glory' was
implied originally in the national name of _Slav_. It is generally held
now that the Slavs gave themselves the name as being 'the
intelligible,' or 'the intelligibly speaking' people; as in the case of
many other races, they regarded their strange-speaking neighbours as
'barbarian,' that is 'stammering,' or even as 'dumb.' So the Russians
call their neighbours the Germans _njemets_, connected with _njemo_,
indistinct. The old name _Slovene_, Slavonians, is probably a
derivative from the substantive which appears in Church Slavonic in the
form _slovo_, a word; see Thomsen's _Russia and Scandinavia_, p. 8.
_Slovo_ is closely connected with the old Slavonic word for 'fame'--
_slava_, hence, no doubt, the explanation of _Slave_ favoured by
Gibbon.]]

Having given by anticipation this handful of examples in illustration
of what in these lectures I propose, I will, before proceeding further,
make a few observations on a subject, which, if we would go at all to
the root of the matter, we can scarcely leave altogether untouched,--I
mean the origin of language, in which however we will not entangle
ourselves deeper than we need. There are, or rather there have been,
two theories about this. One, and that which rather has been than now
is, for few maintain it still, would put language on the same level
with the various arts and inventions with which man has gradually
adorned and enriched his life. It would make him by degrees to have
invented it, just as he might have invented any of these, for himself;
and from rude imperfect beginnings, the inarticulate cries by which he
expressed his natural wants, the sounds by which he sought to imitate
the impression of natural objects upon him, little by little to have
arrived at that wondrous organ of thought and feeling, which his
language is often to him now.