whilst considering only a portion of His work and not considering it as a
whole. He must have created it to be a whole and it is as a whole that it
must be judged. And precisely because the whole cannot be comprehended by
anyone, "hold thy peace, foolish reason," as Pascal said, and judge not or
judge _a priori_, since here it is not possible to judge by
experience; and declare that the Perfect can have willed only the most
perfect that is possible.

THE POSSIBLE AND THE IMPOSSIBLE.--There still remains the
fundamental objection: to reduce God to the conditions of the possible is
to limit Him, and it is useless to say that God is justified if He has done
all the good possible. He is not; the words "possible" and "impossible"
having no meaning to Him who is omnipotent, and by definition infinite
power could effect the impossible.

Yes, Leibnitz replies, there is a metaphysical impossibility, there is an
impossibility in the infinite; this impossibility is absurdity, is
contradiction. Could God make the whole smaller than the part or any line
shorter than a straight one? Reason replies in the negative. Is God
therefore limited? He is limited by the absurd and that means He is
unlimited; for the absurd is a falling away. It is therefore credible that
the mixture of evil and good is a metaphysical necessity to which I will
not say God submits, but in which He acts naturally, and that the absence
of evil is a metaphysical contradiction, an absurdity in itself, which God
cannot commit precisely because He is perfect; and no doubt, instead of
drawing this conclusion, we should actually see it, were the totality of
things, of their relations, of their concordance, and of their harmony
known to us.

The optimism of Leibnitz was ridiculed specially in the _Candide_ of