"A Dog Cannot Be A Hypocrite, But Neither Can He Be Sincere"

 

Ludwig Wittgenstein converses with images of himself. Click a photo for a larger version.

 

     

 

 

This is me, young Ludwig, in my infancy. Are we perhaps over-hasty in our assumption that the smile of an unweaned infant is not a pretence?
This is me circa 1891. Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange country and did not understand the language of that country; that is, as if it already had a language, not this one.

Karl and Leopolodine's silver wedding anniversary, 1898, at our home in Neuwaldeggasse. I'm in the front row on the left. Say to yourself, for example, "The children over there are mere automata; all their liveliness is mere automatism." And you will either find these words become quite meaningless; or you will produce in yourself some kind of uncanny feeling, or something of the sort.
   

 

 

Me, aged 9.

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

 

This is my family at the dinner table; I'm on the right.

A child can talk to picture-men or picture-animals, can treat them as it treats dolls.

 

This me, aged about 18.

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.