Now we have already seen that in all evil the remedy, which not only cures it but transmutes it into good, is knowledge of law and conformity of conduct thereto--a true science and a successful art--in a word, knowledge of the laws of God and obedience to these laws. In the physical world ignorance of these laws is necessarily fatal, but not so in the moral world. Ignorance here is not necessarily fatal though dangerous. By the very nature of a moral being, the essential thing is not knowledge but _character_ or virtue--the _will_ to know and the _effort_ to obey. In the physical realm, knowledge is the goal; in the moral realm, knowledge is only in order to virtue. Therefore, in the case of the individual struggling with moral evil within and without, the victory is always in his power. If he fails, it is his own fault. His utmost effort in this field must be successful, because the result is not external, but internal and in the realm of moral freedom. The spirit of man is self-acting and in some sense, though not absolutely, self-existing, and can not be ruined except by its own act. In the moral world, where the goal is not knowledge but character, attainment must be in proportion to honest endeavor in the right spirit. Evil, then, has its roots in the necessary law of evolution. It is a necessary condition of all progress, and pre-eminently so of moral progress. But some will ask, “Why could not man have been made a perfectly pure, innocent, happy being, unplagued by evil and incapable of sin?” I answer: The thing is impossible even to omnipotence, because it is a contradiction in terms. Such a being would also be incapable of virtue, would not be a moral being at all, would not in fact be man. We can not even conceive of a moral being without freedom to choose. We can not even conceive of virtue without successful conflict with solicitations to debasement. But these solicitations are so strong and so often overcome us, that we are prone to regard the solicitations themselves as essential evil instead of our weak surrender to them.