"Sure. Lots of schools and colleges. Everybody would be pretty bright—and pretty anxious to learn. Everybody would be artistic. Everybody would want to do a certain amount of work with his hands."
"Why?"
"That's the instinct of the critter, isn't it?"
"How come they'd all be bright?"
"Because the biggest fun we're going to have—when we get that wise, if we ever do—is breeding bright people. Living for the sake of future generations—and having some happiness doing it. Happiness with sex, amongst other things, when it ceases to scare us to pieces."
"Maybe," Tom's tone objected, "you might finally convince the folks that knocking themselves off when they got useless was evidence of a great love—an assimilated employment of the death wish. I can even see certain remedial effects in the idea—if that were the common philosophy: people would want to make a bigger effort while they did live, for example. But you can't get dumb babies to knock themselves off."
"You could start—though—at the other end. Clamping down on the people who overproduce and are least qualified to do so."
"Birth control for the morons? The Jukes and Kallikaks?"
"Yeah."
"Too difficult. They fornicate when drunk."