z's solution is this: what are mere possibilities of thought for us
are possibilities of action for God. For a human subject, possibilities of
action are limited to what arises out of his actual situation, but
possibilities for thought are not so limited. I can conceive a world
different in many respects from this world, in which, for example,
vegetables should be gifted with thought and speech; but I can do nothing
towards bringing it about. My imaginary world is practically impossible but
speculatively possible, in the sense that it contradicts no single
principle of necessary and immutable reason. I, indeed, can explore only a
very little way into the region of sheer speculative possibility; God does
not explore it, he simply possesses it all: the whole region of the
possible is but a part of the content of his infinite mind. So among all
possible creatures he chooses the best and creates it.

But the whole realm of the possible is an actual infinity of ideas. Out of
the consideration of an infinity of ideas, how can God arrive at a choice?
Why not? His mind is not, of course, discursive; he does not successively
turn over the leaves of an infinite book of sample worlds, for then he
would never come to the end of it. Embracing infinite possibility in [32]
the single act of his mind, he settles his will with intuitive immediacy
upon the best. The inferior, the monstrous, the absurd is not a wilderness
through which he painfully threads his way, it is that from which he
immediately turns; his wisdom is his elimination of it.

But in so applying the scheme of choice to God's act, have we not
invalidated its application to our own? For if God has chosen the whole
form and fabric of the world, he has chosen everything in it, including the
choices we shall make. And if our choices have already been chosen for us
by God, it would seem to follow that they are not real open choices on our
part at all, but are pre-determined. And if they are pre-determined, it
would seem that they are not really even choices, for a determined choice
is not a choice. But if we do not ourselves exercise real choice in any
degree, then we have no clue to what any choice would be: and if so, we
have no power of conceiving divine choice, either; and so the whole
argument cuts its own throat.

There are two possible lines of escape from this predicament. One is to
define human choice in such a sense that it allows of pre-determination
without cea