process of correction, and of making good, may in addition totally transform and entirely dissipate its nature (Chapter xxiv.).
4. It is impossible rationally to doubt where you have but one idea. You may doubt psychically, given two ideas which seem two but are one. And, even without this actual illusion, you may feel uneasy in mind and may hesitate. But doubt implies two ideas, which in their meaning and truly are two; and, without these ideas, doubt has no rational existence.[1]
5. Where you have an idea and cannot doubt, there logically you must assert. For everything (we have seen throughout) must qualify the Real. And if an idea does not contradict itself, either as it is or as taken with other things (Chapter xvi.), it is at once true and real. Now clearly a sole possibility cannot so contradict itself;[2] and it must therefore be affirmed. Psychical failure and confusion may here of course stand in the way. But such confusion and failure can in theory count for nothing.
6. “But to reason thus,” it may be objected, “is to rest knowledge on ignorance. It is surely the grounding of an assertion on our bare impotence.” No objection could be more mistaken, since the very essence of our principle consists in the diametrical opposite. Its essence lies in the refusal to set blank ignorance in the room of knowledge. He who wishes to doubt, when he has not before him two genuine ideas, he who talks of a possible which is not based on actual knowledge about Reality—it is he who takes his stand upon sheer incapacity. He is the man who, admitting his emptiness, then pretends to bring forth truth. And it is against this monstrous pretence, this mad presumption in
