The Idea of Progress

34 pages. 228 x 145 mm. Wrappers, made of acidic paper, are detached and damaged, book block, made of better paper is in one piece but has stains and chips on first and last leaf. William Ralph Inge (6 June 1860 Crayke, Yorkshire, England - 26 February 1954 Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England) was the husband of Mary Catharine Inge (m. 1904; died 1949) and father of Paula Inge. He was an Anglican priest, an author, professor of divinity at Cambridge, and Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, which explains why he became known as Dean Inge. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times, was educated at Eton College, where he was a King's Scholar and won the Newcastle Scholarship in 1879, and at King's College, Cambridge, where he won a number of prizes, as well as taking firsts in both parts of the Classical Tripos. He was a tutor at Hertford College, Oxford starting in 1888, the year he was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England. His only parochial position was as Vicar of All Saints, Knightsbridge, London, from 1905 to 1907. In 1907, he moved to Jesus College, Cambridge, on being appointed Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity. In 1911, Prime Minister H. H. Asquith chose him to be the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. He was President of the Aristotelian Society at Cambridge from 1920 to 1921, became a columnist for the Evening Standard, a position he would hold until 1946. Inge was a trustee of London's National Portrait Gallery from 1921 to 1951. He had retired from full-time church ministry in 1934. He received all kinds of British honors that impress some people, like Commander of the Victorian Order for example and honorary doctorates galore. Many of Inge's views were unusual for their time, some even now. He disapproved of democracy, which he called "an absurdity", writing that democracy is comparable to "the famous occasion when the voice of the people cried, Crucify Him!" He neglected to note that it is extremely implausible that a Jewish crowd that had just hailed one of their own as a messiah, would most implausibly turn on him and demand of a blood thirsty Roman governor, who didn’t give two hoots what the Jews want, that he should execute Jesus, and, in addition, in a manner that was anathema to Jews. (Suggested reading on this: Hyam Mccoby’s Revolution in Judea.) Inge supported nudism and the publishing of Maurice Parmelee's book, The New Gymnosophy: Nudity and the Modern Life. Inge wrote scores of articles, lectures and sermons, and over 35 books. He was a strong proponent of the spiritual type of religion “that autonomous faith which rests upon experience and individual inspiration", as opposed to one of coercive authority. He was therefore outspoken in his criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church. He was a eugenicist and wrote considerably on the subject. In his book Outspoken Essays, he devotes an entire chapter to this subject. He was nicknamed The Gloomy Dean because of his pessimistic views in his Romanes Lecture of 1920, "The Idea of Progress", being offered here in the original edition, and in his Evening Standard articles and he is remembered as a supporter of animal rights.…