produced,
and it must be said that God is not forced, metaphysically speaking, [253]
into the creation of this world. One may say that as soon as God has
decreed to create something there is a struggle between all the possibles,
all of them laying claim to existence, and that those which, being united,
produce most reality, most perfection, most significance carry the day. It
is true that all this struggle can only be ideal, that is to say, it can
only be a conflict of reasons in the most perfect understanding, which
cannot fail to act in the most perfect way, and consequently to choose the
best. Yet God is bound by a moral necessity, to make things in such a
manner that there can be nothing better: otherwise not only would others
have cause to criticize what he makes, but, more than that, he would not
himself be satisfied with his work, he would blame himself for its
imperfection; and that conflicts with the supreme felicity of the divine
nature. This perpetual sense of his own fault or imperfection would be to
him an inevitable source of grief, as M. Bayle says on another occasion
(p.953).

202. M. Diroys' argument contains a false assumption, in his statement that
nothing can change except by passing from a state less good to a better or
from a better to a less good; and that thus, if God makes the best, what he
has produced cannot be changed: it would be an eternal substance, a god.
But I do not see why a thing cannot change its kind in relation to good or
evil, without changing its degree. In the transition from enjoyment of
music to enjoyment of painting, or _vice versa_ from the pleasure of the
eyes to that of the ears, the degree of enjoyment may remain the same, the
latter gaining no advantage over the former save that of novelty. If the
quadrature of the circle should come to pass or (what is the same thing)
the circulature of the square, that is, if the circle were changed into a
square of the same size, or the square into a circle, it would be difficult
to say, on the whole, without having regard to some special use, whether
one would have gained or lost. Thus the best may be changed into another
which neither yields to it nor surpasses it: but there will always be an
order among them, and that the best order possible. Taking the whole
sequence of things, the best has no equal; but one part of the sequence may
be equalled by another part of the same sequence. Besides it might be said
that the whole sequence