 Fifth, scientific laws are usually expressed by universal statements (i.e., they take the logical form “All As are X”, or some equivalent) which are therefore concealed conditionals—they have to be understood as hypothetical statements asserting what would be the case under certain ideal conditions. In themselves they are not existential in nature. Thus “All As are X” means “If anything is an A, then it is X”. Since scientific laws are non-existential in nature, they logically cannot in themselves imply any basic statements, since the latter are explicitly existential. The question arises, then, as to how any basic statement can falsify a scientific law, given that basic statements are not deducible from scientific laws in themselves? Popper answers that scientific laws are always taken in conjunction with statements outlining the “initial conditions” of the system under investigation; these latter, which are singular existential statements, yield hard and fast implications when combined with the scientific law.