Severity

Use in the book

The parental fragment assigns increased tenderness to the person who is respectfully feared, not to the one who fears. Another note gives severity a contrary result: it freezes faults where indulgence may kill them. The later hypothetical choice prefers softness that allows time for improvement to severity that worsens people or haste that will not wait for repentance. These are not simply inconsistent definitions. They consider different effects and conditions, keeping severity from becoming an automatic synonym either for good discipline or for cruelty. Nor does the last comparison praise every possible softness.

Places to read

1. I, p. 430, entry 3, ¶1Respectfully feared parents are said to become more tender.
2. I, p. 466, entry 6, ¶1Severity can fix faults instead of removing them.
3. II, p. 844, entry 2, ¶1Softness is conditionally preferred when it leaves time for improvement.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains the direction of the parental fear and its respectful qualification. The frozen-fault image remains physical. The final preference stays hypothetical and first-person, with better/worse and time for repentance intact.

Rigorism

French: rigorisme.

Rigorisme here describes a taste that refuses pleasures that would be permitted. The distinction is from good taste’s refusal of false pleasures. Its reproach concerns excessive restriction; the unnamed addressee and conditional permitted pleasures are not expanded into a religious school or fixed list of prohibitions.

Places to read: I, p. 377, entry 1, ¶1.