“It is a most singular cause of division, and one I could almost laugh at, except for the very real passions of anger and of hatred it has aroused,” he said in conclusion. “One often sees terrible bursts of anger and fury in immature minds,” observed Madame in the preamble of her answer. “Young children and people of weak intellect frequently exhibit the most pitiable extremes of fury over trifling causes.” Ezra was not quite certain to what she referred. If to Olive, then she was mistaken in considering her a child. He recalled very vividly what she had said about communism in what one loves, and he was not at all prepared to admit that her arguments were those of a person of weak intellect. “I don’t think this is a case for ‘criticism-cure’ in the Assembly, do you?” she said. “No, certainly not,” replied Ezra, who was keenly alive to the possibility of his wife’s blazing up into uncompromising criticism herself, if they attempted to apply the famous “cure” upon her. “Criticism-cure” existed rather in theory than in practice in Perfection City, but it was held that if a brother or a sister should be guilty of any offence against the common weal, it would be an edifying experience to summon him or her to the Assembly, and let all the members tell him or her exactly what each one thought of the conduct in question. In theory this was supposed to work admirably, and to be a weapon capable of reducing to reason the most refractory member of the Community, but when Ezra remembered it and imagined for a moment its possible effects on Olive, he foresaw a whole train of deplorable results. Suppose she defended herself, she could say sharp rankling things with a surprising amount of unanswerable truth in them, or suppose she didn’t defend herself, but took the scolding silently. Her eyes would get bigger and bigger with tears which would roll over her cheeks, and her sweet little chin would quiver, and she would look imploringly at him. He couldn’t stand that, he knew, but would rush up and take her in his arms, and carry her off out from the midst of the carping, criticising brethren, and he would call her sweet pet and darling, and say she was right and they were horrid brutes to scold her, and he would be very angry and would be quite capable of knocking Brother Wright down, if he, as was likely, had been savage with the little pet. No, criticism-cure should not be applied to Olive. And Ezra, arguing thence into wider fields, began to feel some doubts as to the value of that remarkable weapon as a means of eradicating the naturally evil tendencies of the human heart. Theories which had seemed sound and complete in the abstract had a curious habit of ringing false when he imagined himself as applying them to Olive. It was very curious, but they did not seem to fit her, or was it possible that the theories themselves were wrong? No, he dismissed that thought as entailing too much mental demolition and carting away of rubbish.