hardness of heart

Now that arrangement was not conducive to calm speech or clear thought on Jo’s part, for how could she say hard things to her boy while he watched her with eyes full of love and longing, and lashes still wet with the bitter drop or two her hardness of heart had wrung from him?

So Sprat describes his ideal philosopher: ‘The True Philosophy must be first of all begun, on a scrupulous, and severe examination of particulars: from them, there may be some general Rules, with great caution drawn’; ‘Let us then imagin our Philosopher, to have all slowness of belief, and rigor of Trial, which by some is miscall’d a blindness of mind, and hardness of heart.’

Thus Sprat had wanted to emphasize the tendency of the new science to moderate the ‘extravagances’ of those who believed in providences and wonders: Let us then imagin our Philosopher, to have all slowness of belief, and rigor of Trial, which by some is miscall’d a blindness of mind, and hardness of heart.

To the extent we fail in this duty — because of partisanship, timidity, hardness of heart or some other reason — we fall short of what our faith demands.

And Plummer’s aloofness, his disdain for the movie’s sugary sentimentality, doesn’t just match his character’s own initial hardness of heart.