LANCIOTTO.  Fie, atheist! 
Would you abolish marriage?

  PEPE.  Yes.

  LANCIOTTO.  What?

  PEPE.  Yes.

  LANCIOTTO.  Depopulate the world?

PEPE.  No fear of that. 
I’d have no families, no Malatesti,
Strutting about the land, with pedigrees
And claims bequeathed them by their ancestors;
No fellows vapouring of their royal blood;
No one to seize a whole inheritance,
And rob the other children of the earth. 
By Jove! you should not know your fathers, even! 
I’d have you spring, like toadstools, from the soil—­
Mere sons of women—­nothing more nor less—­
All base-born, and all equal.  There, my lord,
There is a simple commonwealth for you! 
In which aspiring merit takes the lead,
And birth goes begging.

LANCIOTTO.  It is so, in truth;
And by the simplest means I ever heard.

PEPE.  Think of it, cousin.  Tell it to your friends,
The statesmen, soldiers, and philosophers;
Noise it about the earth, and let it stir
The sluggish spirits of the multitudes. 
Pursue the thought, scan it, from end to end,
Through all its latent possibilities. 
It is a great seed dropped, I promise you,
And it must sprout.  Thought never wholly dies;
It only wants a name—­a hard Greek name—­
Some few apostles, who may live on it—­
crowd of listeners, with the average dulness
That man possesses—­and we organize;
Spread our new doctrine, like a general plague;
Talk of man’s progress and development,
Wrongs of society, the march of mind,
The Devil, Doctor Faustus, and what not;
And, lo! this pretty world turns upside down,
All with a fool’s idea!

LANCIOTTO.  By Jupiter,
You hit our modern teachers to a hair! 
I knew this fool was a philosopher. 
Pepe is right.  Mechanic means advance;
Nature bows down to Science’ haughty tread,
And turns the wheel of smutty artifice: 
New governments arise, dilate, decay,
And foster creeds and churches to their tastes: 
At each advance, we cry, “Behold, the end!”
Till some fresh wonder breaks upon the age. 
But man, the moral creature, midst it all
Stands still unchanged; nor moves towards virtue more,
Nor comprehends the mysteries in himself,
More than when Plato taught academies,
Or Zeno thundered from his Attic porch.

PEPE.  I know not that; I only want my scheme
Tried for a while.  I am a politician,
A wrongs-of-man man.  Hang philosophy! 
Let metaphysics swallow, at a gulp,
Its last two syllables, and purge itself
Clean of its filthy humours!  I am one
Ready for martyrdom, for stake and fire,
If I can make my great idea take root! 
Zounds! cousin, if I had an audience,
I’d make you shudder at my eloquence! 
I have an itching to reform the world.