The common-sense view of the Creation story, and one that is now widely accepted even by orthodox Christians, is that it is a myth. Many of us will, therefore, agree with Professor Huxley when he says: "I suppose it to be an hypothesis respecting the origin of the universe which some ancient thinker found himself able to reconcile with his knowledge, or what he thought was knowledge, of the nature of things, and therefore assumed to be true. As such, I hold it to be not merely an interesting, but a venerable, monument of a stage in the mental progress of mankind; and I find it difficult to suppose that any one who is acquainted with the cosmogonies of other nations--and especially with those of the Egyptians and the Babylonians, with whom the Israelites were in such frequent and intimate communication--should consider it to possess either more or less scientific importance than may be allotted to these." [156] It may not be inappropriate to conclude this section with Milton's conception of the last act of creation, so charmingly simple and so strictly according to the Bible and what Christ Himself believed, and yet so completely untrue:-- The sixth, and of creation last, arose With ev'ning harps and matin, when God said, Let the earth bring forth soul living in her kind: Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth, Each in their kind. The earth obey'd, and straight Op'ning her fertile womb teem'd at a birth Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, Limb'd and full grown.... There waited yet the master-work, the end Of all yet done; a creature who, not prone And brute as other creatures, but indu'd With sanctity of reason, might erect His stature, and upright with front serene Govern the rest, self knowing:... ... Therefore the omnipotent Eternal Father--for where is not he Present?--thus to his Son audibly spake: Let us make now man in our image, man In our similitude, and let them rule Over the fish and fowl of sea and air, Beast of the field, and over all the earth, And every creeping thing that creeps the ground. Thus said, he form'd thee, Adam, thee, O man, Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breath'd The breath of life: in his own image he Created thee, in the image of God Express, and thou becam'st a living soul. --Paradise Lost, Book VII., 449-456, 505-510, 516-528. § 4. Proofs of Our Animal Origin.