This maxim is altogether to my liking, and I draw from it this conclusion, that God does the very best possible:  otherwise the exercise of his goodness would be restricted, and that would be restricting his goodness itself, if it did not prompt him to the best, if he were lacking in good will.  Or again it would be restricting his wisdom and his power, if he lacked the knowledge necessary for discerning the best and for finding the means to obtain it, or if he lacked the strength necessary for employing these means.  There is, however, ambiguity in the assertion that love of virtue and hatred of vice are infinite in God:  if that were absolutely and unreservedly true, in practice there would be no vice in the world.  But although each one of God’s perfections is infinite in itself, it is exercised only in proportion to the object and as the nature of things prompts it.  Thus love of the best in the whole carries the day over [188] all other individual inclinations or hatreds; it is the only impulse whose very exercise is absolutely infinite, nothing having power to prevent God from declaring himself for the best; and some vice being combined with the best possible plan, God permits it.

118.  III.  ’An infinite goodness having guided the Creator in the production of the world, all the characteristics of knowledge, skill, power and greatness that are displayed in his work are destined for the happiness of intelligent creatures.  He wished to show forth his perfections only to the end that creatures of this kind should find their felicity in the knowledge, the admiration and the love of the Supreme Being.’

This maxim appears to me not sufficiently exact.  I grant that the happiness of intelligent creatures is the principal part of God’s design, for they are most like him; but nevertheless I do not see how one can prove that to be his sole aim.  It is true that the realm of nature must serve the realm of grace:  but, since all is connected in God’s great design, we must believe that the realm of grace is also in some way adapted to that of nature, so that nature preserves the utmost order and beauty, to render the combination of the two the most perfect that can be.  And there is no reason to suppose that God, for the sake of some lessening of moral evil, would reverse the whole order of nature.  Each perfection or imperfection in the creature has its value, but there is none that has an infinite value.  Thus the moral or physical good and evil of rational creatures does not infinitely exceed the good and evil which is simply metaphysical, namely that which lies in the perfection of the other creatures; and yet one would be bound to say this if the present maxim were strictly true.  When God justified to the Prophet Jonah the pardon that he had granted to the inhabitants of Nineveh, he even touched upon the interest of the beasts who would have been involved in the ruin of this great city.  No substance is