The Silence
against conflating this early work of his with his later work (including the Remarks)—but because color is one of Remarks those things about which the limits of knowledge become pronounced. The Tractatus is like a machine whose workings stay with us even after the thing has fallen apart. It trains us to think as he does, and meanwhile it provides us with numerous examples of Wittgenstein’s preference for visual analogies and his special regard for the fact of color. In the above passages, Tom Sawyer is at first taken by the empty nothing of the book’s final section. This opens the first door to this book, an analysis of its form. Written in the style of its namesake, Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico Politicus, with axioms laid out according to a numerical priority, we are encouraged to consider it first chronologically, and then logically. That is, we can read from front to back, first reading proposition 1, then 1.1, etc.—or we can move through as though taking in the branches of a tree, from thickest trunk to major branches, to mere limbs, and then twigs. This would proceed 1, then 2, then 3, until we reach 7—at which point we would return to read 1.1, then 2.01, etc. The logical structure tells
us that the statements with numbers after the decimal are dependent upon the statements with parent integers. So 1.1 is of course dependent upon, or flows from, 1. Either way, we find a curious, and very significant emptiness after the final integer 7, which states, “7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” And so, we do. Tom and Huck, Part 2 It was three days before Tom saw Huck again, and this time it was when he was on his way to go fishing. He was ducking off the road and onto a footpath through some tall grass when he saw Huck lying beneath a tree. He swung about and planted his fishing pole on the ground, rather like a Continental soldier planting his musket, or so he thought himself. He then called out, “You up?” “Not yet” came the reply, and then Huck pulled his hat, a battered bowler, off his head and sat up grinning. “That book plum knocked me out!” The two gazed at each other, and then around at the bright morning for a minute as if in amazement. Then Huck got out two crumpled and partly smoked cigarettes, stuck them in his mouth, and proceeded
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