1. “If nettles and thistles grow in my cabbage garden, I don’t try to persuade them to grow into cabbages.”—Froude. Here the clause states a condition which is to be regarded as really taking place. The idea of time is also associated with that of condition.
2. “If, in the least particular, one could derange the order of nature,—who would accept the gift of life?”—Emerson. The clause here states an imaginary condition, but at the same time implies what is the real state of the case; namely, that no one can, in the least particular, derange the order of nature.
3. “I might have been a minister myself, for aught I know, if this clergyman had not looked and talked so like an undertaker.”—Holmes. Here the sentence is so framed that the contrary of both clause and principal proposition is implied; namely, this clergyman did look and talk exactly like an undertaker, hence I am not a minister. Is it not wonderful that by means of one set of words we may say two opposite things, and not fail of being understood?
4. “If I was ever weak enough to give anything to a petitioner of whatever nationality, it always rained decayed compatriots of his for a month after.”—Lowell. Here the subordinate thought is put into the form of a clause of condition, but at the same time we understand that we are to find in it the cause of the principal proposition.
5. “Middlingness is always pardonable, so that one does not ask others to take it for superiority.”—George Eliot. The clause is here a saving clause. It states the exception necessary to be made in order that the principal proposition may be accepted as true.
6. “If my friend was not a genius, he was certainly a monomaniac.”—H. James. This sentence does not mean that my friend was a monomaniac provided he was not a genius, but is a brief way of saying,—If you assert that my friend was not a genius, you will then have to admit that he was certainly a monomaniac.
7. “She has met the equinoctials before, if it is the equinoctials that are beginning.”—Black. Here the clause does not state a condition for the principal proposition, but for some thought not expressed,—this, perhaps: and can meet this storm.
In these sentences we have by no means shown all that may be accomplished by the conditional clause. We have only indicated the types of sentences most frequently met with in which this clause occurs.
What the Conditional Clause modifies.—The conditional clause is usually brought into the sentence by the predicate of the principal proposition, and so must be looked upon as an adjunct of that predicate. Sometimes, however, it modifies a gerund, participle, or infinitive. In the sentence;—“She must have a story, well, ill, or indifferently told, so there be life stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents,” the clause modifies the participle told after it has been modified by the adverbs well, ill, and indifferently.
Introductory Word.—1. The subordinating conjunctions if, so, unless (= if not).