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.

1. External Physical Evil in the Animal Kingdom.—As already seen in previous chapters, the necessary condition of evolution of the organic kingdom is a struggle for life—a conflict on every side, with a seemingly inimical environment and a survival of only the strongest, the swiftest, or the most cunning—in a word, the fittest.