The Theist may desire personal perfection, but his desire is self-centred; each righteous individual is righteous, as it were, alone, and his righteousness does not benefit his fellows save as it may make him helpful and loving in his dealings with them.

The Atheist desires personal perfection not only for his joy in it as beautiful in itself, but because science has taught him the unity of the race, and he knows that each fresh conquest of his over the baser parts of his nature, and each strengthening of the higher, is a gain for all, and not for himself alone."[22] Besides all this, the struggle against evil, regarded as transitory and as a necessary concomitant of evolution, loses its bitterness.

"In dealing with evil, Atheism is full of hope instead of despair.

To the Christian, evil is as everlasting as good; it exists by the permission of God, and, therefore, by the will of God.

Our nature is corrupt, inclined to evil; the devil is ever near us, working all sin and all misery.