One of my minor heroes is Dean W. R. Inge (rhymes with sing, not singe), clergyman, theologian, classical scholar, eugenist, and controversialist. At the height of his fame, in the 1920s and 30s, Inge was known as the Gloomy Dean, for his belief that civilisation, on the whole, was going to the dogs.
Inge deserves recognition by GNXPers, if only for having coined the term dysgenic to describe a trend towards genetic decline in a population, complaining that ‘our present social order skims off the cream in each generation and throws it away’.
He also had a neat turn of phrase. Some typical Ingeisms…
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