TITLE: Is there a way to prove that the order of an element in a Group divides the order of the Group, WITHOUT USING LAGRANGE'S
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: This is a very easy fact we use in Group Theory,
But somehow, I wondered that whether there may be another way (other than Lagrange's Theorem) to prove that the order of an element divides the order of Group.
I attempted to go on the term "exponent" of the Group (just assume that G is a Finite Group), which we may define the least common multiple of orders of elements in G. But this exponent divides $|G|$, since the order of each element divides $|G|$. So it became a little paradox. 
Shall I think that; before teaching this fact in a Course, one should teach about Lagrange's first?

REPLY [6 votes]: As I mentioned, here is a way to show that the order of any element divides the order of the group, which does not use Lagrange. Instead, it uses a bunch of knowledge about permutations, which might sometimes have been introduced before Lagrange.
So let $x\in G $ and note that $a\mapsto xa $ defines a permutation of $G $. So write this permutation as a product of disjoint cycles, with the shortest of length $m $.
Now $x^m $ has a fixed point (any element in the $m $-cycle). But this means that $x^mb = b $ for some $b\in G $ and thus $x^m= 1$. However, if there was also some cycle of length $k>m $ in the decomposition of $x $ then no element in this cycle would be fixed by $x^m $, but since $x^m $ was equal to $1$ this is clearly absurd, so we conclude that all cycles have length $m $.
Now we get the conclusion since the sum of the lengths of the cycles is precisely the order of the group, so $m $ divides this and is clearly the order of $x $.