1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.2 What is the case--a fact--is the existence of states of affairs.1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.1.2 The world divides into facts.1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.
3. A logical picture of facts is a thought.2.01 A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things).2.1 We picture facts to ourselves.2.011 It is essential to things that they should be possible constituents of states of affairs.2.02 Objects are simple.2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in a stateof affairs, the possibility of the state of affairs must be writteninto the thing itself.
2.0122 Things are independent in so far as they can occur in all possible situations, but this form of independence is a form of connexionwith states of affairs, a form of dependence. (It is impossible forwords to appear in two different roles: by themselves, and in propositions.)2.0123 If I know an object I also know all its possible occurrencesin states of affairs. (Every one of these possibilities must be part ofthe nature of the object.) A new possibility cannot be discoveredlater.
2.01231 If I am to know an object, though I need not know its external properties, I must know all its internal properties.2.0124 If all objects are given, then at the same time all possiblestates of affairs are also given.2.03 In a state of affairs objects fit into one another like the links of a chain.2.0211 If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition hadsense would depend on whether another proposition was true.2.0231 The substance of the world can only determine a form, and notany material properties. For it is only by means of propositionsthat material properties are represented--only by the configurationof objects that they are produced.
2.0251 Space, time, colour (being coloured) are forms of objects.
2.0272 The configuration of objects produces states of affairs.
2.031 In a state of affairs objects stand in a determinate relationto one another.2.04 The totality of existing states of affairs is the world.2.033 Form is the possibility of structure.
2.034 The structure of a fact consists of the structures of statesof affairs.
2.05 The totality of existing states of affairs also determines which states of affairs do not exist.
2.06 The existence and non-existence of states of affairs is reality. (We call the existence of states of affairs a positive fact, and their non-existence a negative fact.)
2.061 States of affairs are independent of one another.2.062 From the existence or non-existence of one state of affairs itis impossible to infer the existence or non-existence of another.
2.11 A picture presents a situation in logical space, the existenceand non-existence of states of affairs.2.12 A picture is a model of reality.
2.13 In a picture objects have the elements of the picture corresponding to them.
2.15 The fact that the elements of a picture are related to one another in a determinate way represents that things are related to one another in the same way. Let us call this connexion of its elements the structure of the picture, and let us call the possibility of this structure the pictorial form of the picture.
2.16 If a fact is to be a picture, it must have something in commonwith what it depicts.
2.161 There must be something identical in a picture and what it depicts, to enable the one to be a picture of the other at all.2.17 What a picture must have in common with reality, in order tobe able to depict it--correctly or incorrectly--in the way that it does,is its pictorial form.2.171 A picture can depict any reality whose form it has. A spatialpicture can depict anything spatial, a coloured one anything coloured, etc.2.18 What any picture, of whatever form, must have in common withreality, in order to be able to depict it--correctly or incorrectly--inany way at all, is logical form, i.e. the form of reality.2.172 A picture cannot, however, depict its pictorial form: it displays it.
2.181 A picture whose pictorial form is logical form is called a logical picture.2.19 Logical pictures can depict the world.2.182 Every picture is at the same time a logical one. (On the otherhand, not every picture is, for example, a spatial one.)
2.203 A picture agrees with reality or fails to agree; it is corrector incorrect, true or false.2.221 What a picture represents is its sense.
2.222 The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity.
2.223 In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare it with reality.
2.224 It is impossible to tell from the picture alone whether it istrue or false.
2.225 There are no pictures that are true a priori.
4. A thought is a proposition with a sense.3.01 The totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world.3.1 In a proposition a thought finds an expression that can be perceived by the senses.3.02 A thought contains the possibility of the situation of whichit is the thought. What is thinkable is possible too.
3.03 Thought can never be of anything illogical, since, if it were,we should have to think illogically.
3.04 If a thought were correct a priori, it would be a thought whose possibility ensured its truth.
3.05 A priori knowledge that a thought was true would be possibleonly if its truth were recognizable from the thought itself (withoutanything a to compare it with).
3.11 We use the perceptible sign of a proposition (spoken or written,etc.) as a projection of a possible situation. The method of projectionis to think of the sense of the proposition.3.2 In a proposition a thought can be expressed in such a way that elements of the propositional sign correspond to the objectsof the thought.3.12 I call the sign with which we express a thought a propositional sign. And a proposition is a propositional sign in its projective relation to the world.
3.13 A proposition, therefore, does not actually contain its sense,but does contain the possibility of expressing it. ('The contentof a proposition' means the content of a proposition that has sense.) A proposition contains the form, but not the content, of its sense.
3.3 Only propositions have sense; only in the nexus of a propositiondoes a name have meaning.3.201 I call such elements 'simple signs', and such a proposition 'complete analysed'.3.21 The configuration of objects in a situation corresponds to the configuration of simple signs in the propositional sign.3.202 The simple signs employed in propositions are called names.
3.203 A name means an object. The object is its meaning. ('A' is thesame sign as 'A'.)
3.25 A proposition cannot be dissected any further by means of a definition: it is a primitive sign.
3.32 A sign is what can be perceived of a symbol.3.328 If a sign is useless, it is meaningless. That is the point ofOccam's maxim. (If everything behaves as if a sign had meaning, thenit does have meaning.)3.33 In logical syntax the meaning of a sign should never play a role. It must be possible to establish logical syntax without mentioningthe meaning of a sign: only the description of expressions may be presupposed.3.332 No proposition can make a statement about itself, because a propositional sign cannot be contained in itself (that is the whole of the 'theory of types').
5 A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.(An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.)4.1 Propositions represent the existence and non-existence of statesof affairs.4.001 The totality of propositions is language.4.01 A proposition is a picture of reality. A proposition is a modelof reality as we imagine it.4.0031 All philosophy is a 'critique of language' (though not in Mauthner's sense). It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one.4.015 The possibility of all imagery, of all our pictorial modes of expression, is contained in the logic of depiction.4.05 Reality is compared with propositions.4.021 A proposition is a picture of reality: for if I understand a proposition, I know the situation that it represents. And I understand the proposition without having had its sense explained to me.
4.023 A proposition must restrict reality to two alternatives: yesor no. In order to do that, it must describe reality completely. A proposition is a description of a state of affairs. Just as a descriptionof an object describes it by giving its external properties, so a proposition describes reality by its internal properties. A proposition constructs a world with the help of a logical scaffolding, so that one can actually see from the proposition how everything stands logically if it is true. One can draw inferences from a false proposition.
4.06 A proposition can be true or false only in virtue of being apicture of reality.
4.11 The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science (or the whole corpus of the natural sciences).4.4 A proposition is an expression of agreement and disagreementwith truth-possibilities of elementary propositions.4.111 Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. (The word 'philosophy' must mean something whose place is above or below the natural sciences, not beside them.)4.12 Propositions can represent the whole of reality, but they cannot represent what they must have in common with reality in orderto be able to represent it--logical form. In order to be able to represent logical form, we should have to be able to station ourselveswith propositions somewhere outside logic, that is to say outsidethe world.4.112 Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not resultin 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarificationof propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudyand indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharpboundaries.
4.113 Philosophy sets limits to the much disputed sphere of naturalscience.
4.114 It must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so,to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thoughtby working outwards through what can be thought.
4.115 It will signify what cannot be said, by presenting clearly whatcan be said.
4.116 Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly.
4.121 Propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored inthem. What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent.What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language. Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it.4.21 The simplest kind of proposition, an elementary proposition,asserts the existence of a state of affairs.4.1212 What can be shown, cannot be said.4.41 Truth-possibilities of elementary propositions are the conditions of the truth and falsity of propositions.4.461 Propositions show what they say; tautologies and contradictionsshow that they say nothing. A tautology has no truth-conditions, sinceit is unconditionally true: and a contradiction is true on no condition. Tautologies and contradictions lack sense. (Like a point fromwhich two arrows go out in opposite directions to one another.) (For example, I know nothing about the weather when I know that itis either raining or not raining.)
6 The general form of a truth-function is [p, E, N(E)]. This isthe general form of a proposition.5.01 Elementary propositions are the truth-arguments of propositions.5.2 The structures of propositions stand in internal relations to one another.5.133 All deductions are made a priori.5.134 One elementary proposition cannot be deduced form another.
5.153 In itself, a proposition is neither probable nor improbable.Either an event occurs or it does not: there is no middle way.
5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
5.61 Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also itslimits. So we cannot say in logic, 'The world has this in it, and this,but not that.' For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since itwould require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world;for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side aswell. We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think wecannot say either.5.621 The world and life are one.5.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.)5.631 There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertainsideas. If I wrote a book called The World as l found it , I should haveto include a report on my body, and should have to say which partswere subordinate to my will, and which were not, etc., this beinga method of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject; for it alone could not be mentionedin that book.--5.632 The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limitof the world.
5.633 Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found? Youwill say that this is exactly like the case of the eye and the visualfield. But really you do not see the eye. And nothing in the visualfield allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.
5.641 Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk aboutthe self in a non-psychological way. What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that 'the world is my world'. The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limitof the world--not a part of it.
7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.6.1 The propositions of logic are tautologies.6.001 What this says is just that every proposition is a result of successive applications to elementary propositions of the operation N(E)6.021 A number is the exponent of an operation.
6.022 The concept of number is simply what is common to all numbers,the general form of a number. The concept of number is the variable number. And the concept of numerical equality is the general form of all particular cases of numerical equality.
6.11 Therefore the propositions of logic say nothing. (They are the analytic propositions.)6.2 Mathematics is a logical method. The propositions of mathematicsare equations, and therefore pseudo-propositions.6.113 It is the peculiar mark of logical propositions that one canrecognize that they are true from the symbol alone, and this fact contains in itself the whole philosophy of logic. And so too it is a very important fact that the truth or falsity of non-logical propositions cannot be recognized from the propositions alone.6.13 Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.6.1224 It also becomes clear now why logic was called the theory offorms and of inference.6.123 Clearly the laws of logic cannot in their turn be subject tolaws of logic. (There is not, as Russell thought, a special law of contradiction for each 'type'; one law is enough, since it is not applied to itself.)6.1261 In logic process and result are equivalent. (Hence the absenceof surprise.)6.21 A proposition of mathematics does not express a thought.6.5 When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question canbe framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.6.22 The logic of the world, which is shown in tautologies by the propositions of logic, is shown in equations by mathematics.
6.234 Mathematics is a method of logic.6.32 The law of causality is not a law but the form of a law.6.34 All such propositions, including the principle of sufficientreason, tile laws of continuity in nature and of least effort in ature,etc. etc.--all these are a priori insights about the forms in which the propositions of science can be cast.
6.37 There is no compulsion making one thing happen because anotherhas happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity.
6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists--and if it did exist, it would have no value. If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental. It must lie outside the world.6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained.
6.375 Just as the only necessity that exists is logical necessity,so too the only impossibility that exists is logical impossibility.
6.42 So too it is impossible for there to be propositions of ethics. Propositions can express nothing that is higher.
6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.6.432 How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world.
6.52 We feel that even when all possible scientific questions havebeen answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Ofcourse there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer.6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following:to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science--i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy -- and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person--he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy--this method would be the only strictly correct one.
6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understandsme finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)