possible

[peter123]

Hi there,

I read a sentence from a book about Buddhism. Is there any grammar term for the underlined phrase? What does the underlined phrase mean?

If one believes this, then it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to eliminate suffering and its causes.

tks
pete

[Tdol]

It means that the writer probably thinks it's impossible but doesn't want to say it categorically as they cannot be 100% sure that this is the case.