He advances, but advances wrongly, and therefore has to go back upon his steps.

He progresses in what he calls civilisation, which so long as it is purely self-aggrandisement, is but a common circle, bringing him back in due course to primitive savagery.

Now I, for example, started in life to make money--I made it, and it brought me power, which I thought progress; but now, at the end of my tether, I see plainly that I have done no good in my career save such good as will come from my having placed all my foolish gainings under the control of a nature simpler and therefore stronger than my own.

And I, leaving my dross behind me, must go forward and begin again--spiritually the wiser for my experience of this world, which may help me better to understand the next." Thus he mused, as he slowly trudged along under the bright and burning sun--happy enough in his thoughts except that now and then a curious touch of foreboding fear came over him as to whether anything ill had happened to Mary in his absence.
"For one never knows!"-- and a faint shudder came over him as he remembered Tom o' the Gleam, and the cruel, uncalled-for death of his child, the only human creature left to him in the world to care for.
"One can never tell, whether in the scheme of creation there is such a being as a devil, who takes joy in running counter to the beneficent intentions of the Creator! Light exists--and Darkness.

Good seems co-equal with Evil.