There is no way of escaping from this antithesis between the inconceivability of the existence of error and the impossibility of denying the existence of errors which the mind recognizes and the fact proves, save by the solution to which we have several times had occasion to refer. That error, which has existence, is not error and negativity, but something positive, a product of the spirit. And since that product of the spirit is without truth, it cannot be the work of the theoretic spirit. And since beyond the theoretic spirit there is nothing but the practical spirit, error, which we meet with as something existing, must of necessity be a product of the practical spirit. If every way of issue is closed, this one is open; it goes to the very bottom and leads to the place of rest. Indeed, he who produces an error has no power to twist or to denaturalize or stain the truth, which is his thought itself, the thought which acts in him and in all men; indeed, no sooner has he touched thought than he is touched by it: he thinks and does not err. He possesses only the practical power of passing from thought to _deed_; and his doing, in fact his thinking, is to open his mouth and emit sounds to which there corresponds no thought, or, what is the same thing, no thought which has value, precision, coherence and truth. It is to smear a canvas to which no intuition corresponds; to rhyme a sonnet, combining the phrases of others, which simulate the genius that is absent. Theoretical error, when it is truly so, is inseparable from the life of thought, which to the extent to which it perpetually overcomes that negative moment, is always born anew. When it is possible to separate and consider it in itself, what is before us is not theoretical error, but practical act. [Sidenote: _Practical acts not practical errors._]