Adequate ideas are true through themselves
Formal Statement
Every idea which in us is absolute, adequate, and perfect is true. Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge that inadequate ideas involve. Inadequate and confused ideas follow by the same necessity as adequate or clear and distinct ideas.
In Plain Language
Adequate ideas carry their own credential: if you truly grasp why something must be so, you do not need external verification. Falsity is not a positive force — it is a gap, a privation. And crucially, confused ideas are not lawless: they follow from causes just as necessarily as clear ones do. This means the path from ignorance to understanding is itself a natural causal process, not a miracle of willpower.
Why This Follows
Step 4 (df-04) showed that most of our ideas are inadequate. This step establishes what adequacy means and why it matters: adequate ideas are self-certifying truths, and the transition from inadequate to adequate is itself governed by necessity, not by an act of uncaused will.
Truth is structural adequacy, and even confusion is causally determined.
Connected Concepts
When you really understand a mathematical proof, do you need someone else to tell you it is true? What does that tell you about the nature of adequate knowledge?