ying no contradiction is possible. But as for me, holding as I do that
God did the best that was possible, or that he could not have done better
than he has done, deeming also that to pass any other judgement upon his
work in its entirety would be to wrong his goodness or his wisdom, I must
say that to make something which surpasses in goodness the best itself,
that indeed would imply contradiction. That would be as if someone
maintained that God could draw from one point to another a line shorter
than the straight line, and accused those who deny this of subverting the
article of faith whereby we believe in God the Father Almighty.

225. The infinity of possibles, however great it may be, is no greater than
that of the wisdom of God, who knows all possibles. One may even say that
if this wisdom does not exceed the possibles extensively, since the objects
of the understanding cannot go beyond the possible, which in a sense is
alone intelligible, it exceeds them intensively, by reason of the
infinitely infinite combinations it makes thereof, and its many
deliberations concerning them. The wisdom of God, not content with
embracing all the possibles, penetrates them, compares them, weighs them
one against the other, to estimate their degrees of perfection or
imperfection, the strong and the weak, the good and the evil. It goes even
beyond the finite combinations, it makes of them an infinity of infinites,
that is to say, an infinity of possible sequences of the universe, each of
which contains an infinity of creatures. By this means the divine Wisdom
distributes all the possibles it had already contemplated separately, into
so many universal systems which it further compares the one with the other.
The result of all these comparisons and deliberations is the choice of the
best from among all these possible systems, which wisdom makes in [268]
order to satisfy goodness completely; and such is precisely the plan of the
universe as it is. Moreover, all these operations of the divine
understanding, although they have among them an order and a priority of
nature, always take place together, no priority of time existing among
them.

226. The careful consideration of these things will, I hope, induce a
different idea of the greatness of the divine perfections, and especially
of the wisdom and goodness of God, from any that can exist in the minds of
those who make God act at random, without cause or reason. And I do not see
ho