Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

The Critical Faculty is the most potent one in the human make-up. Its pervasiveness and force have not properly been recognized because like breathing, it is so much a part and parcel of human activity. The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass. The critical sense is essential for keeping social transactions in a warm state. Otherwise life would become very dull and goody-goody. The critical faculty is responsible for a lot of give and take in life. It increases our awareness of our surroundings; it sounds dignified no doubt, but is seems also to mean that we can watch someone else’s back better than our own! We never know our own defects till they are pointed out to us, and even then we need not accept them. We always question the bonafides of the man who tells us unpleasant facts. On the surface it is all very well to say, ‘I want an honest criticism; that will help me, not blind compliments.’ I wish people would mean it.