em before the
beginning of the existing world, classified the possibilities into worlds,
and chose the best of all. He comes sometimes to visit these places, to
enjoy the pleasure of recapitulating things and of renewing his own choice,
which cannot fail to please him. I have only to speak, and we shall see a
whole world that my father might have produced, wherein will be represented
anything that can be asked of him; and in this way one may know also what
would happen if any particular possibility should attain unto [371]
existence. And whenever the conditions are not determinate enough, there
will be as many such worlds differing from one another as one shall wish,
which will answer differently the same question, in as many ways as
possible. You learnt geometry in your youth, like all well-instructed
Greeks. You know therefore that when the conditions of a required point do
not sufficiently determine it, and there is an infinite number of them,
they all fall into what the geometricians call a locus, and this locus at
least (which is often a line) will be determinate. Thus you can picture to
yourself an ordered succession of worlds, which shall contain each and
every one the case that is in question, and shall vary its circumstances
and its consequences. But if you put a case that differs from the actual
world only in one single definite thing and in its results, a certain one
of those determinate worlds will answer you. These worlds are all here,
that is, in ideas. I will show you some, wherein shall be found, not
absolutely the same Sextus as you have seen (that is not possible, he
carries with him always that which he shall be) but several Sextuses
resembling him, possessing all that you know already of the true Sextus,
but not all that is already in him imperceptibly, nor in consequence all
that shall yet happen to him. You will find in one world a very happy and
noble Sextus, in another a Sextus content with a mediocre state, a Sextus,
indeed, of every kind and endless diversity of forms.

415. Thereupon the Goddess led Theodorus into one of the halls of the
palace: when he was within, it was no longer a hall, it was a world,

_Solemque suum, sua sidera norat_.

At the command of Pallas there came within view Dodona with the temple of
Jupiter, and Sextus issuing thence; he could be heard saying that he would
obey the God. And lo! he goes to a city lying between two seas, resembling
Corinth. He buys ther