My Year With Proust - Day 25

"It was like every attitude or action which reveals a man's deep and hidden character; they bear no relation to what he has previously said, and we cannot confirm our suspicions by the culprit's evidence, for he will admit nothing; we are reduced to the evidence of our senses, and we ask ourselves, in the face of this detached and incoherent fragment of recollection, whether indeed our senses have not been the victims of a hallucination; with the result that such attitudes, and these alone are of importance in indicating character, are the most apt to leave us in perplexity."

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 133

Here is another instance where the young Proust and his family are trying to figure out the actions of the odd Legrandin.  I'll have to come back to this because I'd like to include one of my favorite passages from Marcus Aurelius where he walks you through the approach that you should take every time you meet someone; classic MA where you intellectually dissect the other person, including their reasons for doing whatever they're doing.

Ah, yes, section 11 from Book Three of the Meditations:

"11. To these maxims add yet another.  When an object presents itself to your perception, make a mental definition or at least an outline of it, so as to discern its essential character, to pierce beyond its separate attributes to a distinct view of the naked whole, and to identify for yourself both the object itself and the elements of which it is composed, and into which it will again be resolved.  Nothing so enlarges the mind as this ability to examine methodically and accurately every one of life's experiences, with an eye to determining its classification, the ends it serves, its worth to the universe, and its worth to men as the members of that supreme City in which all other cities are as households.  Take, for example, the thing which is producing its impressions upon me at this moment.  What is it?  Whereof is it composed? How long is it designed to last?  What moral response does it ask of me; gentleness, fortitude, candour, good faith, sincerity, self-reliance, or some other quality?  In every instance learn to say, This comes from God; or, This is one of Fate's dispensations, a strand in the complex web, a conjunction of fortuities; or again, This is the work of a man who is of the same stock and breed and brotherhood as I am, but is ignorant of what Nature requires of him.  I myself, however, can plead no such ignorance, and therefore in accordance with Nature's law of brotherhood I am to deal amiably and fairly with him - though at the same time, if there be no question of good or evil involved, I must aim my shafts at the proper merits of the case."