What, Wittgenstein asked simply, is language? Why and how do the squawks a person makes, and the squiggles they draw, conjure up all that is in the world? Anthony Quinton, a British philosopher, compared his instincts to those of Sir Isaac Newton, who had troubled to ask why stones fall to the ground when others had been content enough to say, “They just do.” Still, the “Tractatus” was revolutionary in its naivety. He drew on the work of Gottlob Frege, a German logician. “If I don’t live to see the end of this war,” he confided to a friend, “I must be prepared for all my work to go to nothing.” He resolved, finally, to write. Largely cut off from his British friends, he was left with his own thoughts and a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s “The Gospel in Brief” he would mimic its pared-down, staccato structure in the “Tractatus”. Then aged 25, Wittgenstein answered the call for troops and was sent to the Eastern Front to fight for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was in Vienna visiting his family when the conflict began. Wittgenstein himself had other preoccupations, principally suicide. His mentor, Bertrand Russell, made a habit of taking notes when the two spoke, lest his protégé’s genius be lost to memory. He refused, fearing that an imperfect work of philosophy was worthless.

Before the war, as a student at Cambridge, Wittgenstein’s talent was clear to his contemporaries, who begged him to put his many thoughts into writing.

That the book ever made it into print was miraculous.

Ludwig wittgenstein ray monk