But even if we proceed to form a judgment, as "trees and flowers exist," it may still be shown that the conjunction "and" connects the substantives "trees," "flowers," and not propositions. For if we reduce the given proposition to the form, "trees exist and flowers exist," the conjunction becomes wholly superfluous. It adds nothing whatever to the meaning of the separate propositions, "trees exist," "flowers exist." Omit, however, the conjunction between the substantives in the original proposition, and the sense is wholly lost. What meaning can we attach, except by a convention, to the form of words "trees flowers exist." Now there is, I conceive, no more obvious principle in grammar than that the doctrine of the elements of speech should be founded upon the examination of instances in which they have a real meaning--in which their employment is essential, not accidental. It is doubtless one of the consequences of the neglect of this principle, that the older grammarians have made it a part of the definition of a conjunction, that it is a word "devoid of signification" ([Greek: phônê asêmos]). See references in Harris, p. 240. Were the philosophy of grammar founded, as alone it truly can be, upon the laws of thought, I venture to think that such statements would no longer be accepted. If the views which I have expressed needed confirmation, they would to my own mind derive it from the circumstance, that on applying to the original proposition that "mathematical analysis of logic" to which H. C. K. refers (not, I think, without a shade of scorn), it is resolved into the elementary propositions, "trees exist," "flowers exist," _unconnected by any sign_. Let us take, as a second example, the proposition, "All trees are endogens or exogens." If the subject, "all trees," is to be retained, there is, I conceive, but one way in which the above proposition can mentally be formed. We form the conception of that collection of things which comprises endogens and exogens together, and we refer, by an act of judgment, "all trees" to that collection. And thus _the subject "all trees," remaining unchanged_, the conjunction "or" connects the terms of the predicate, as the conjunction "and" in the previous example connected those of the subject. I am prepared to show that this is the only view of the proposition consistent with its strictly logical use. If H. C. K. insist upon the resolution "any tree is an endogen, or it is an exogen," I would ask him to define the word "it." He cannot interpret it as "any tree," for the resolution would then be invalid. It must be applied to a _particular_ tree, and then the proposition resolved is really a "singular" one, and not the proposition whose subject is "all trees."