Doubt, for Dante, is a productive state of mind. This is true even in the Paradiso, where, if one were to suppose that Christian faith was simply a matter of comforting certitude, one might imagine that Dante would have been content to offer, faithfully, a simple reaffirmation of established doctrine. Yet at 4: 124–32, the poet declares that doubt springs like a growing shoot from the base of truth and drives the mind onwards to ever greater understanding.
