Even then, it continues in physical decomposition, and because the dead are still able to provoke changes in the living. The microscope-telescope figure is uniquely relative, for no matter how large the small may be made to appear, it remains, always, in ratio to distance. In Proust, we have two analogical metaphors that have application to the microscope and the telescope. The magic lantern of his boyhood is similar to the microscope. It enlarges the image it projects.
Windows are analogous to the telescope.
What appears to be different becomes the same, once the specimen has been stained by time. The clarity of the lens, the keenness of the vision behind it, are trifles by comparison. Personality is by nature incongruous, being a product of time. Time, at any given moment, tends to obscure this. To a child, names are magical sounds that precede and then identify objects of reality.