This will give you an idea in what manner the Science of Language can open before our eyes a period in the history of law, customs, and manners, which hitherto was either entirely closed, or reached only by devious paths. Formerly, for instance, it was supposed that the Latin word _lex_, law, was connected with the Greek λόγος. This is wrong, for λόγος never means law in the sense in which _lex_ does. λόγος, from λέγειν, to collect, to gather, signifies, like κατάλογος, a gathering, a collection, an ordering, be it of words or thoughts. The idea that there is a λόγος, an order or law, for instance, in nature, is not classical, but purely modern. It is not improbable that _lex_ is connected with the English word _law_, only not by way of the Norman _loi_. English _law_ is A.S. _lagu_ (as _saw_ corresponds both to the German _Sage_ and _Säge_), and it meant originally what was laid down or settled, with exactly the same conception as the German _Gesetz_. It has been attempted to derive the Latin _lex_, too, from the same root, though there is this difficulty, that the root of _liegen_ and _legen_ does not elsewhere occur in Latin. The mere disappearance of the aspiration would be no serious obstacle. If, however, the Latin _lex_ cannot be derived from that root, we must, with Corssen, refer it to the same cluster of words to which _ligare_, to bind, _obligatio_, binding, and the Oscan ablative _lig-ud_ belong, and assign to it the original meaning of _bond_. On no account can it be derived from _legere_, to read, as if it meant a bill first read before the people, and afterwards receiving legal sanction by their approval. From these considerations we gain at least this negative result, that, before their separation, the Aryan languages had no settled word for law; and even such negative results have their importance. The Sanskrit word for law is +dharma+, derived from +dhar+, to hold fast. The Greek word is νόμος, derived from νέμειν, to dispense, from which _Nemesis_, the dispensing deity, and perhaps even _Numa_, the name of the fabulous king and lawgiver of Rome.