He believed therefore that something better planned could have been made, and he was right.  But if he had known the system of Copernicus, with the discoveries of Kepler, now extended by knowledge of the gravity of the planets, he would indeed have confessed that the contrivance of the true system is marvellous.  We see, therefore, that here the question concerned the more or less only; Alfonso maintained that better could have been done, and his opinion was censured by everyone.

194.  Yet philosophers and theologians dare to support dogmatically such a belief; and I have many times wondered that gifted and pious persons should have been capable of setting bounds to the goodness and the perfection of God.  For to assert that he knows what is best, that he can do it and that he does it not, is to avow that it rested with his will only to make the world better than it is; but that is what one calls lacking goodness.  It is acting against that axiom already quoted:  Minus bonum habet rationem mali.  If some adduce experience to prove that God could have done better, they set themselves up as ridiculous critics of his works.  To such will be given the answer given to all those who criticize God’s course of action, and who from this same assumption, that is, the alleged defects of the world, would infer that there is an evil God, or at least a God neutral between good and evil.  And if we hold the same opinion as King Alfonso, we shall, I say, receive this answer:  You have known the world only since the day before yesterday, you see scarce farther than your nose, and you carp at the world.  Wait until you know more of the world and consider therein especially the parts which present a complete whole (as do organic bodies); and you will find there a contrivance and a beauty transcending all imagination.  Let us thence draw conclusions as to the wisdom and the goodness of the author of things, even in things that we know not.  We find in the universe some things which are not pleasing to us; but let us be aware that it is not made for us alone.  It is nevertheless made for us if we are wise:  it will serve us if we use it for our service; we shall be happy in it if we wish to be.

[249] 195.  Someone will say that it is impossible to produce the best, because there is no perfect creature, and that it is always possible to produce one which would be more perfect.  I answer that what can be said of a creature or of a particular substance, which can always be surpassed by another, is not to be applied to the universe, which, since it must extend through all future eternity, is an infinity.  Moreover, there is an infinite number of creatures in the smallest particle of matter, because of the actual division of the continuum to infinity.  And infinity, that is to say, the accumulation of an infinite number of substances, is, properly speaking, not a whole any more than the infinite number itself, whereof one cannot say whether it is even or uneven.  That is just what serves to confute those who make of the world a God, or who think of God as the Soul of the world; for the world or the universe cannot be regarded as an animal or as a substance.