Now, if the conclusions which the scientist draws from the widest observation of Nature, including the human mind itself, fail to account for the existence of the mind of man, and natural religion does account for it, there is an irreconcilable conflict between science and religion. I can not avoid the conviction that Mr. Darwin has missed the point of this conflict. "I am aware," he says, "that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to show why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man, as a distinct species by descent from a lower form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction." I do not understand him, by the terms "religious" or "irreligious," to refer to anything that involves praise or blame for adopting one hypothesis rather than another. I suppose he meant to say that a belief in his theory of the descent of man as a species is no more inconsistent with a belief in God than it is to believe that the individual is brought into being through the operation of the laws of ordinary reproduction which God has established. This would be strictly true, if the hypothesis of man's descent as a distinct species from some lower form accounted for his existence by proofs that satisfy the rules of evidence by which our beliefs ought to be and must be determined. In that case, there would be no inconsistency between his hypothesis and that to which natural religion conducts us. On the other hand, if the Darwinian hypothesis fails to establish a relation between the soul of man, as a special creation, and a competent creator, then the antagonism between this hypothesis and natural religion is direct, immediate, and irreconcilable; for the essence of religion consists in that relation, and a belief in that relation is what we mean, or ought to mean, by religion.