But it will be again objected that all ideals are relative and temporary; that we are in fact drawn onward and upward by many successive ideals, one beyond another, in the course. Ideals are but mile-stones which we put successively behind us while we press on to another; they are successive rounds of an infinite ladder which we put successively beneath us while we rise higher. This one also we shall eventually put behind us and pass on. To this I have two answers: Admitted that in many ways such is the course of progress; but who has been able to reach this ideal and conceive a higher? When this one is reached and completely realized in our personal character, it will be time enough to propose another. Again, it is true that in many ways we have advanced and are still advancing by the use of partial ideals; but this use of partial and relative ideals is itself in only a temporary stage of evolution. At a certain stage we catch glimpses of the _absolute_ moral ideal. Then our gaze becomes fixed, and we are thenceforward drawn upward forever. The human race has already reached a point when the absolute ideal of character is attractive. This Divine ideal can never again be lost to humanity. CHAPTER IX. THE RELATION OF EVOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. The problem of evil has tasked the power and baffled the skill of the greatest thinkers in every age. It would be folly in me to imagine that I can solve it. Its complete solution is probably impossible in the present state of science. Yet I can not doubt that on this, as on every important question relating to man, the theory of evolution will throw new and important light. All I can hope to do is to throw out some brief suggestions on the subject. If evolution be true, and especially if man be indeed a product of evolution, then what we call evil is not a unique phenomenon confined to man, and the result of an accident, but must be a great fact pervading all nature, and a part of its very constitution. It must have existed in all time in different forms, and subject like all else to the law of evolution. Let us, then, trace rapidly some of the steps of this evolution.