The command "Be fruitful and multiply" was promulgated, according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two people.

Inge’s wry epigram turns on the biblical injunction in Genesis—“Be fruitful and multiply”—by pointing out its supposed first audience: the primal couple. The humor exposes how moral commands can be treated as timeless absolutes even though their original circumstances were radically different from later ones. Read as social criticism, the line suggests that appeals to ancient authority may ignore changed conditions (e.g., population pressure, economics, or public health) and that ethical reasoning should attend to context rather than rely on inherited formulas. It also reflects Inge’s broader reputation as a skeptical, paradox-loving Anglican thinker who often used irony to puncture complacent certainties.