the example
of many good authors, that it was consistent with order and the general
good for God to grant to certain of his creatures the opportunity to
exercise their freedom, even when he foresaw that they would turn to evil:
for God could easily correct the evil, and it was not fitting that in order
to prevent sin he should always act in an extraordinary way. It will
therefore sufficiently refute the objection to show that a world with evil
may be better than a world without evil. But I have gone still further in
the work, and have even shown that this universe must be indeed better than
every other possible universe.

[379]
OBJECTION II

If there is more evil than good in intelligent creatures, there is more
evil than good in all God's work.

Now there is more evil than good in intelligent creatures.

Therefore there is more evil than good in all God's work.

ANSWER

I deny the major and the minor of this conditional syllogism. As for the
major, I do not admit it because this supposed inference from the part to
the whole, from intelligent creatures to all creatures, assumes tacitly and
without proof that creatures devoid of reason cannot be compared or taken
into account with those that have reason. But why might not the surplus of
good in the non-intelligent creatures that fill the world compensate for
and even exceed incomparably the surplus of evil in rational creatures? It
is true that the value of the latter is greater; but by way of compensation
the others are incomparably greater in number; and it may be that the
proportion of number and quantity surpasses that of value and quality.

The minor also I cannot admit, namely, that there is more evil than good in
intelligent creatures. One need not even agree that there is more evil than
good in the human kind. For it is possible, and even a very reasonable
thing, that the glory and the perfection of the blessed may be incomparably
greater than the misery and imperfection of the damned, and that here the
excellence of the total good in the smaller number may exceed the total
evil which is in the greater number. The blessed draw near to divinity
through a divine Mediator, so far as can belong to these created beings,
and make such progress in good as is impossible for the damned to make in
evil, even though they should approach as nearly as may be the nature of
demons. God is infinite, an