Owen — Revision of Pronouns. 37 



80 scon a5 "that" is regarded as a mere sign of substantive usage, the 

 main sentence is left without apparent subject. The bla,nk may then be 

 filled by the anticipative "It", with the following result: lb is gener- 

 ally believed that France will fight." Also rearrangement permits suc- 

 cessive use of both anticipative and retrospective proxies as follov/s: 

 "As for this, that France will fight, it is generally believed". That is, 

 historically rendered, the fighting of France is anticipated by "i/tis" 

 and by "that'' as well as retrospectively repeated by ' it". 



The conception of "that" as a "conjunction", required to connect the 

 following clause v/ith the principal, is obviously untenable and actually 

 losing favor. If saying needs joining to v/hat is said, I see no reason 

 to doubt that eating needs to be joined to vrhat is eaten. And con- 

 versely, given "The boy ate the pudding", if I can dispense with a bond 

 of union between the boy's eating and the pudding, so also in "They say 

 that France will fight" I doubt not that I can do without a conjunction 

 between "their saying" and "France's fighting". The error of Grammar 

 lies however deeper than these suggestions indicate, and deserves a 

 moment's attention in view of its bearing on the general problem of 

 conjunction. It lies in conceiving the saying and the fighting as in a 

 condition to be joined, that is, as separate. In fact they arc members 

 of a single sentence, one utterly unfaithful to my purpose, if either 

 member be omitted. "They say" does not tell you what I mean or any 

 self-suflicient part thereof; the same is true of "France will fight". 

 These two are parts of one whole and accordingly as closely joined as 

 thought and speech can make them. For the utmost union that any 

 factor of thought or sentence can establish with its fellows, is attained 

 so soon as it is recognized as indispensable to what is intended. Union 

 and junction are really the merest figures of speech. The reality of 

 the case is indispensability. Now of all the words in my illustration 

 one only can be omitted without injury to my thought or its presentar 

 tion, namely, "that".^ Yet on this word, of all my words the least 

 necessar5% Grammar lays the burden of performing the conjunctive act. 

 That is, in extremely objective parlance, the word "that" does not stick, 

 itself, to either part of my sentence; yet one of the parts thereof it 

 shall, as Grammar will have it, stick to the other. It is, in other v/ords, 

 expected to glue two things together, without itself adhering to either. 



The vicarious function is somewliat more obscure in "Yes" 

 and "JSTo." To illustrate tliis^ suppose you ask me, "Is Brown 

 ill?" and I answer, "Yes." I think it will generally be ad- 



^When "that" is left out, it is the merest begging of the question to claim 

 that it still is present in thought. No such claim is made with a direct quota- 

 tion. Yet such quotation consists of the same thought as the indirect, being 

 merely further conceived as in the words of a particular individual. In short 

 the direct quotation, as the larger addendum, should require the stronger bond 

 of union, and presumably can least dispense therewith. 



