[Sidenote: _Transfiguration, in the search thus understood, of error into suggestion or hypothesis._] But the seeker sets to work in quite a different spirit from that of the assertor of errors. The spirit of research is not the rebel erring spirit, and therefore the path that both follow is only the same in appearance; the first was the path of errors, but the second can only be so called by metaphor. Errors are errors when there is the will for error. Where, on the other hand, there is the will to unify material and to prepare the conditions of thought, the improper combination of ideas is not indeed error, but _suggestion_ or _hypothesis._ The hypothesis is not an act of truth, because either it is not verified and so reveals itself as without truth, or it is verified and becomes truth only at the moment in which it is verified. But neither is it an act of error, because it is affirmed, not as truth, but as simple means or aid toward the conquest of truth. In the doctrine of search, the series of errors is all redeemed, baptized, or blessed anew; the diabolic spirit abandons it precipitately, leaving it void of truth, but innocent. [Sidenote: _Distinction between error as error and error as hypothesis._] The distinction between error as _error_ and error as _suggestion,_ between _error_ and _hypothesis_ or heuristic expedients, is of capital importance. It is found as basis of some common distinctions, such as those between _mistake_ and _error,_ between error committed in _good faith_ and error committed in _bad faith,_ and the like. These and others like them show themselves to be certainly untenable, because error as error is always in bad faith, and there is no difference between error and mistake, save an empirical difference, or a difference of verbal emphasis, for it can be said according to empirical accidents that an affirmation is either simply erroneous or altogether a mistake. But although they cannot be maintained as they are formulated, they nevertheless suggest the desirability and the anticipation of this true and profound distinction. [Sidenote: _Immanence of the suggestion in error itself as error._]