the good of the universe.  I have shown that among older writers the fall of Adam was termed felix culpa, a fortunate sin, because it had been expiated with immense benefit by the incarnation of the Son of God:  for he gave to the universe something more noble than anything there would otherwise have been amongst created beings.  For the better understanding of the matter I added, following 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, and the Devil is finite; good can and does go on ad infinitum, whereas evil has its bounds.  It