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 Wittgenstein in the 1930s

Wittgenstein’s “middle period” is often seen as a transitional phase

connecting his better-known early and later philosophies. The fifteen
essays in this volume focus both on the distinctive character of his
teaching and writing in the 1930s, and on its pivotal importance for an
understanding of his philosophy as a whole. They offer wide-ranging
perspectives on the central issue of how best to identify changes and
continuities in his philosophy during those years, as well as on particular
topics in the philosophy of mind, religion, ethics, aesthetics, and the
philosophy of mathematics. The volume will be valuable for all who are
interested in this formative period of Wittgenstein’s development.

david g. stern is Professor of Philosophy and a Collegiate Fellow in the

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa. He is the
author of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction
(CUP, 2004) and Wittgenstein on Mind and Language (1995), as well as
more than 50 journal articles and book chapters. He is also a coeditor of
The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein (CUP, 2nd edition, 2018),
Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930–1933, from the Notes of
G. E. Moore (CUP, 2016), and Wittgenstein Reads Weininger (CUP,
2004).
Wittgenstein in the 1930s
Between the Tractatus and the Investigations

Edited by

david g. stern
University of Iowa
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Walking with Wittgenstein

My father was equable and mild. Not so

Was Ludwig Wittgenstein. His lean
Body twitched nervously and his musician‘s
Hands never ceased from movement, nor his bony
Ankles and feet. He never would sit still,
As though the violence of his thoughts made slow
Deliberate movement quite impossible.
Yet there were times his nervous face went stony
And quiet as he brooded on the green
Meaning of things. His thoughts resembled flowers
Drawn by a delicate hand. In golden showers
They flickered silently across his face.
Anxiety kept to his bodily conditions,
His knitted brows, his knotted legs. His thoughts had grace.
Walking with Wittgenstein was like a race,
But a race for hobbledehoys, three-legged dwarfs,
Fantastic wizards. Nothing went by halves.
He strode ahead, all joints, his noble face
Swept by the wind, his eyes darting about,
Observant and perceptive as his mind,
And just as nervous, earnest, and devout
In seeking truth, and also just as kind.
But often he saw nothing but the river
Of his own thoughts, the nervously twitching veins
Of fine distinctions, philosophic gains
And losses, victories, defeats.
For, while he loved the people in the streets,
Philosophy alone rushed on forever.
Nicholas Moore, poet and son of G. E. Moore
Contents

List of Contributors page ix

List of Abbreviations xii
Introduction: Wittgenstein between the Tractatus and the
Investigations 1
David G. Stern

Part I Changes and Continuities in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy 25

1 Wittgenstein and Moore on Grammar 27
David G. Stern
2 Wittgenstein on Understanding: Language, Calculus,
and Practice 45
Alois Pichler
3 Wittgenstein on Sentence-Hypotheses and Certainty 61
Mauro L. Engelmann
4 Wittgenstein on Meaning, Use, and Linguistic Commitment 77
Anna Boncompagni
5 Will There Soon Be Skilful Philosophers? Wittgenstein
on Himself, His Work, and the State of Civilization in 1930 93
Wolfgang Kienzler
6 Wittgenstein and His Students: 1929–1933 109
James C. Klagge

Part II Philosophy of Mind 123

7 From Moore’s Lecture Notes to Wittgenstein’s Blue Book:
The Emergence of Wittgenstein’s Performative Conception
of the Self 125
Hans Sluga

vii
viii Contents

8 “Two Kinds of Use of ‘I’”: The Middle Wittgenstein

on “I” and the Self 141
William Child
9 Wittgenstein on Rules and the Mental 158
Volker A. Munz

Part III Religion, Ethics, and Aesthetics 175

10 Wittgenstein’s Discussion of “Use of Such a Word
as ‘God’” 177
Anat Biletzki
11 Wittgenstein on Ethics, May 1933 194
Duncan Richter
12 Wittgenstein on Aesthetic Normativity and Grammar 209
Hanne Appelqvist
13 Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Aesthetics and Their Context 224
Joachim Schulte

Part IV Philosophy of Mathematics 239

14 Moore’s Notes and Wittgenstein’s Philosophy
of Mathematics: The Case of Mathematical Induction 241
Warren Goldfarb
15 Wittgenstein, Goodstein, and the Origin of the Uniqueness
Rule for Primitive Recursive Arithmetic 253
Mathieu Marion and Mitsuhiro Okada
Bibliography 272
Index 290
Contributors

Hanne Appelqvist, Docent of Theoretical Philosophy, University of

Helsinki, and Fellow of the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies,
University of Turku. She is the author of Wittgenstein and the
Conditions of Musical Communication (2008) and has published
several articles on the Kantian features of Wittgenstein’s thought.
Anat Biletzki, Albert Schweitzer Professor of Philosophy, Quinnipiac
University, Hamden, CT, and Tel-Aviv University, Israel. She is the
author of (Over)Interpreting Wittgenstein (2003) and Talking Wolves:
Thomas Hobbes on the Language of Politics and the Politics of
Language (1997).
Anna Boncompagni, Chancellor’s ADVANCE Postdoctoral Fellow,
University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Wittgenstein and
Pragmatism: On Certainty in the Light of Peirce and James (2016) and
Wittgenstein: Lo sguardo e il limite (2012).
William Child, Professor of Philosophy, University of Oxford. He is the
author of Wittgenstein (2011) and Causality, Interpretation, and the
Mind (1994), and coeditor, with David Charles, of Wittgensteinian
Themes: Essays in Honour of David Pears (2001).
Mauro L. Engelmann, Professor of Philosophy at the Federal University
of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, and researcher at the National
Research Council (CNPq). He is the author of Wittgenstein’s
Philosophical Development: Phenomenology, Grammar, Method and
the Anthropological View (2013) and a number of articles on
Wittgenstein and the history of analytic philosophy.
Warren Goldfarb, W. B. Pearson Professor of Modern Mathematics
and Mathematical Logic, Harvard University. He coauthored, with
Burton Dreben, The Decision Problem: Solvable Classes of
Quantificational Formulas (1979), and coedited, with Solomon

ix
x List of Contributors

Feferman et al., Kurt Gödel’s Collected Works, vol. III (1995), vols. IV–
V (2003), and has published many papers on mathematical logic, the
development of analytic philosophy, and on issues in metaphysics and
philosophical logic.
Wolfgang Kienzler, teaches philosophy at Friedrich Schiller University
Jena, Germany. He is the author of books (in German) on
Wittgenstein’s turn to his late philosophy, 1930–1932 (1997),
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (2007), and a study of the
development of Frege’s thought (2009).
James C. Klagge, Professor of Philosophy, Virginia Tech. He is the
author of Wittgenstein in Exile (2011) and Simply Wittgenstein (2016),
editor of Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy (2001), and
coeditor, with Alfred Nordmann, of two collections of Wittgenstein’s
writing, Philosophical Occasions, 1912–1951 (1993) and Public and
Private Occasions (2003).
Mathieu Marion, Professor of Philosophy, University of Quebec at
Montreal. He is the author of two books on Wittgenstein:
Wittgenstein, Finitism, and the Foundations of Mathematics (1998),
and an introduction (in French) to the Tractatus (2004), as well as a
number of papers on Wittgenstein and the history of analytic philosophy.
Volker A. Munz, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy,
University of Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria. He is the author of Satz
und Sinn (2005) and coeditor, with Bernhard Ritter, of Wittgenstein’s
Whewell’s Court Lectures, Cambridge 1938–1941 (2017).
Mitsuhiro Okada, Professor of Philosophy, Keio University, Japan. He
has published widely on logic in general, and proof theory in particular,
as well as on logical philosophy and philosophy of mathematics,
epistemology, semantics, and historical studies in logic and philosophy.
Alois Pichler, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Wittgenstein
Archives at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is the author of
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: From the Book to the
Album (2004) and coeditor, with Simo Säätelä, of Wittgenstein: The
Philosopher and His Works (2005).
Duncan Richter, Professor of Philosophy, Charles S. Luck III ’55
Institute Professor, Virginia Military Institute. He is the author of five
List of Contributors xi

books; the most recent are the second edition of a Historical Dictionary
of Wittgenstein’s Philosophy (2014) and Anscombe’s Moral
Philosophy (2011).
Joachim Schulte, recently retired from teaching at University of Zurich,
Switzerland. His publications include numerous articles and four
books on Wittgenstein as well as critical editions of his main works;
with P. M. S. Hacker, he edited and translated the revised fourth edition
of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (2009).
Hans Sluga, William and Trudy Ausfahl Professor of Philosophy,
University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Heidegger’s
Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (1993), Wittgenstein
(2011), and Politics and the Search for the Common Good (2014).
David G. Stern, Professor of Philosophy and a Collegiate Fellow in the
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa. He is the
coeditor, with Brian Rogers and Gabriel Citron, of Wittgenstein:
Lectures, Cambridge 1930–1933, From the Notes of G. E. Moore
(2016) and the author of Wittgenstein on Mind and Language (1995)
and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction
(2004).
Abbreviations

AWL Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1932–1935,

edited by A. Ambrose
BLBK The Blue Book
BRBK The Brown Book
BT The Big Typescript
CPJ Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment
CPR Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
CV1 Culture and Value
LC Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and
Religious Belief
LE “A Lecture on Ethics” (In PO)
LFM Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of
Mathematics, Cambridge 1939
LWL Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1930–1932, edited by
D. Lee
M Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930–1933, From the
Notes of G. E. Moore
MS Manuscript in Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen
Electronic Edition
Ms- Manuscript in Wittgenstein Source Bergen Nachlass
Edition
MWL Moore, G. E. “Wittgenstein’s Lectures in 1930–33” (In PO)
NB Notebooks 1914–1916
OC On Certainty
PG Philosophical Grammar
PI Philosophical Investigations
PO Philosophical Occasions
PPO Ludwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions

1
References to Culture and Value are cited from both the 1980 English translation
edition and the 1998 revised second edition; e.g., the 1930 “Sketch for a
Foreword” is cited as CV, 1980: 6–8; 1998: 8–11.

xii
List of Abbreviations xiii

PR Philosophical Remarks
RFM Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics
RLF “Some Remarks on Logical Form” (In PO)
RPPII Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vol. II
TLP Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
TS Typescript in Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen
Electronic Edition
Ts- Typescript in Wittgenstein Source Bergen Nachlass
Edition
VW The Voices of Wittgenstein. The Vienna Circle
WC Wittgenstein in Cambridge: Letters and Documents 1911–
1951
Wi3 Wiener Ausgabe Band 3 [MSS 109–110]
Wi4 Wiener Ausgabe Band 4 [MSS 111–112]
Wi5 Wiener Ausgabe Band 5 [MSS 113–114]
WWCL Wittgenstein’s Whewell’s Court Lectures, Cambridge
1938–1941
WWK Waismann, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle
Z Zettel
 Introduction: Wittgenstein between the
Tractatus and the Investigations
d a v i d g . st e r n

1. The “Middle Wittgenstein”

The aim of this collection of 15 previously unpublished essays is
not only to provide a wide range of fresh perspectives on
Wittgenstein’s philosophical writing and teaching during his so-
called “middle period” (roughly 1929–1936), but also to make
the case for its interest and importance for our understanding of
his philosophy as a whole. The exact dating of this stage of his
work is itself debatable, precisely because it is understood as pick-
ing out the years after he began to rework his early philosophy, as
set out in the Tractatus, and before he had arrived at the definitive
formulation of his later philosophy in the Philosophical
Investigations. For present purposes, we can regard it as beginning
with Wittgenstein’s return to Cambridge, and full-time philosophi-
cal writing, in early 1929, and ending in late 1936, when he
drafted an early version of the Investigations.
Contributors to this collection include representatives of a number of
very different approaches to Wittgenstein interpretation, address a wide
range of themes and topics, and often make strong claims that are
challengingly incompatible with the views of other contributors.
Nevertheless, they generally agree that the old schematic interpretations
on which those years were a time of “disintegration and reconstruc-
tion”1 in Wittgenstein’s philosophical development are misleadingly
simple, and that the truth is not only much more messy and complicated,
but also much more interesting. At first, these years were approached as
little more than a period of transition between Wittgenstein’s early and
later work, and the focus of discussion was usually the single “fixed

1
The title of chapter 5 of Hacker 1986 (and chapter 4 of the first edition of that
book).

1
2 David G. Stern

point” or “pivot” on which the entire movement from the earlier to the
later philosophy supposedly turned.2 More recently, as previously
unpublished material has become more readily available, there has
been a growing recognition that the path from the Tractatus to the
Philosophical Investigations was a long and complicated one, with
many turning points and branching paths along the way.
Over 40 years after scholars began to give serious attention to this
stage of Wittgenstein’s career, the notion of the “Middle Wittgenstein”
has become well established. But his work during those years remains
much less well understood, or widely appreciated, than his earlier and
later philosophy. We are still at a relatively early stage in identifying the
principal features of Wittgenstein’s work during these years, and relat-
ing them to the main lines of his early and late masterpieces, Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations. In large part,
this is because the 1930s were a period of rapid change for
Wittgenstein. As a result, none of the publications from those years,
each put into final form after his death, has the settled and polished
character of a fully finished work. The middle Wittgenstein did not
create a masterpiece comparable to the Tractatus or Investigations that
can serve as a point of reference.
In view of this lack of agreement on such basic matters as to what to
count as Wittgenstein’s principal work or works during these years, let
alone a settled frame within which to map out the lay of the land, the
principal purpose of this introduction is to place the discussion in
Wittgenstein in the 1930s against the backdrop of previous work on
the topic. Section 2 provides a brief outline of Wittgenstein’s teaching
and writing during these years, and their relationship to the posthu-
mously published selections from his papers that are usually relied on
as the basis for interpreting his philosophical work during those years.
Section 3 outlines some of the principal interpretative approaches to
Wittgenstein’s philosophical evolution, and asks why so much discus-
sion of the “Middle Wittgenstein” has focused on the nature of his
relationship to his earlier and his later selves. Section 4 challenges the
view, first put forward by Wittgenstein himself, that he was a solitary
thinker, reviewing some of the wide range of writers that he quoted or
discussed during these years. Finally, Section 5, an introduction to the
individual chapters, includes a short summary of each one, with

2
PI, §108.
Wittgenstein between the Tractatus and the Investigations 3

particular attention to the areas where the collection as a whole makes

a distinctive contribution to our understanding of Wittgenstein in the
1930s.

2. Wittgenstein’s Teaching and Writing in the 1930s

When Wittgenstein moved to Cambridge in January 1929, he was
returning to the place where – over 15 years before – he had studied
under Bertrand Russell, engaged in discussions with G. E. Moore, and
begun to develop his early philosophy. Returning to Cambridge and
reengaging in philosophical activities marked a significant new phase in
his philosophical career. The manuscripts from 1929 record his first
steps away from the Tractatus; by the end of 1936, he had written an
early version of the Philosophical Investigations, although the book did
not take on its final form until the mid-1940s.
Upon returning to Cambridge, Wittgenstein received a research posi-
tion at Trinity College and immediately began to draft new philoso-
phical work. On February 2, 1929, Wittgenstein began writing – in the
first of a series of large, hard-bound manuscript volumes – a sequential
record of selected work in progress, often culled from smaller first-draft
notebooks.3 In January 1930 he also began to give lectures, in which he
further developed the themes of his ongoing research. From 1929 to
1936, he usually spent half the year in Cambridge and most of the rest
of the time in Vienna. In addition to writing, revising, and rearranging
the many thousands of pages of manuscripts and typescripts from these
years that make up a large part of his Nachlass, and his collaboration
with Waismann while in Vienna,4 Wittgenstein also devoted a great
deal of time and energy to his teaching in Cambridge. Thanks to
3
Thanks to the detailed indexes to the Philosophical Remarks and The Big
Typescript in the Vienna edition of Wittgenstein’s writing from this period, it is
very easy to date each of the remarks in those books and track any given remark’s
context in the source manuscripts. All of this material is available in
Wittgenstein’s Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition (Wittgenstein 2000) and
the online edition Wittgenstein Source Bergen Nachlass Edition (http://wittgen
steinsource.org). Much of it has also been published in the Vienna edition of
Wittgenstein’s writing from the early 1930s (Wittgenstein 1993).
4
Waismann’s notes of their meetings, the manuscripts based on his work with
Wittgenstein, and the book that he ultimately wrote based on this collaboration
provide us with a detailed record of various stages of their relationship. See
Waismann 1967, 1997, VW. Baker 1979 is an informative introduction to their
relationship.
4 David G. Stern

Moore, who attended his lectures from January 1930 to May 1933, we
have an almost verbatim record of what Wittgenstein said in those
classes.5
The following term, Wittgenstein decided that his class had become
too large and instead began to dictate what we now know as The Blue
Book (1933–1934) and then The Brown Book (1934–1935) to a small
group of students; this material then served as the basis for discussion
with the class as a whole. One member of this group was Francis
Skinner, a close friend of Wittgenstein’s who was a graduate fellow in
mathematics at Trinity from 1933 to 1936. Skinner took many other
lecture notes in the mid-1930s, and the two of them worked on revising
and rearranging those notes into more polished texts. In 1935–1936,
they studied Russian together and talked of moving to the USSR.
Skinner died of polio in 1941, with Wittgenstein by his side. Shortly
afterward, he gave Skinner’s lecture notes and related manuscripts—
the “Skinner Archive”—to a mutual friend, Reuben Goodstein, who
kept it secret. The Archive was rediscovered in 2000, during a valuation
of the Mathematical Association’s materials stored at the University of
Leicester, and it is currently held on loan at the Wren Library, Trinity
College, where work is in progress on an edition of these materials.6 An
edition of extensive notes taken by Smythies at Wittgenstein’s lectures
in the late 1930s and early 1940s is now also available.7 Once Skinner’s
notes are published, we will have a remarkably detailed record of
Wittgenstein’s teaching in English throughout the 1930s.
Wittgenstein’s manuscript volumes played a number of different
roles in his philosophical writing. First of all, they served as a diary-
like record of new work. Later on, he used the manuscript volumes to
rewrite, rearrange, or criticize his own earlier work. The manuscript

5
For Moore’s analysis and summary of those lectures, see MWL. For Moore’s
original lectures notes, see M. As almost all of Wittgenstein’s manuscript volume
entries from these years and Moore’s lectures notes can be precisely dated, it is
possible systematically to compare and draw connections between the topics that
he covered in his lectures and what he said about them, and what he wrote at the
time. A number of the papers in this collection use this information to explore the
multifaceted relationship between Wittgenstein’s writing and teaching. See notes
41 and 42 on page 16 for references to examples.
6
They include a draft of a continuation of The Brown Book on topics in the
philosophy of mind, and other previously unknown lecture notes and polished
manuscripts. See Gibson 2010.
7
WWCL.
Wittgenstein between the Tractatus and the Investigations 5

volumes also served as a source from which he would select remarks

that he would dictate to a typist, thus yielding several carbon copies of a
chronologically ordered typescript, one of which could then be cut up,
rearranged and retyped to produce a topically organized draft.
Wittgenstein’s principal posthumous publications from the early
1930s, the Philosophical Remarks, The Big Typescript, and
Philosophical Grammar, were constructed by selecting, and then rear-
ranging and revising, material taken from his manuscript volumes.8
The Philosophical Remarks, typed up in the spring of 1930, and
assembled in its final order later that year, is the first synoptic collection
and arrangement of material that Wittgenstein made from his manu-
script volumes during the 1930s. It is likely that the initial typescript
(TS 208), in which the remarks are arranged in the order they were
composed, was only produced in order to provide Russell with material
that he could consult in order to write a report on Wittgenstein’s
progress, and put in its published order as part of his application for
the Trinity fellowship he held during 1931 to 1936. However, it does
provide a convenient review of the work that Wittgenstein had done
during the first year or so of post-Tractatus writing. One can trace a
path that leads from the opening chapters of the Philosophical
Remarks, via the treatment of those topics in The Big Typescript, The
Blue Book and The Brown Book, leading up to the material we now
know as the Early, Intermediate, and Late versions of the Philosophical
Investigations, dating from the late 1930s, early 1940s, and mid 1940s
respectively.9
While one can argue about the extent, and significance, of the simi-
larities and dissimilarities between any two of these items, there can be
no doubt that the Philosophical Remarks addresses many of the themes
that would preoccupy Wittgenstein throughout the following decade.
In retrospect, we can see it as a very early stage in a process of revision
and rearrangement that would ultimately result in the production of
the Philosophical Investigations. Yet, at the same time, there is an
enormous distance that separates the two texts. Part of the difficulty
in assessing the nature of this distance is that the Philosophical

8
They also involve a substantial editorial contribution. For further discussion of
how Wittgenstein’s editors have shaped perceptions of his writing, and the
construction of the books published under his name after his death, see Kenny
1976 and 2005, Hintikka 1991, and Stern 1996.
9
See Wittgenstein 2001.
6 David G. Stern

Remarks, like The Big Typescript, is a transitional collection of writing

from Wittgenstein’s manuscripts, in which a wide variety of ideas are
explored in a highly provisional way. Seen in hindsight, it is easy for us
to read it as setting out a much more worked out and coherent position
than the text in question actually supports, for we can hardly help
reading it as anticipating, or outlining, positions that have since
become familiar. It is only too easy to read those books as early versions
of the familiar positions that are usually attributed to the Philosophical
Investigations. For this reason, we need to interpret these writings not
only by means of the standard philosophical strategy of identifying the
first formulation of views we recognize from the later work, but also by
identifying the conflicting and often contradictory impulses at work in
Wittgenstein’s writing from the 1930s.

3. Debates over the “Middle Wittgenstein”

The great majority of the books and articles that have been written on
the middle Wittgenstein take one side or another in a series of running
debates over the relative importance of the many new themes that
emerged during those years, with a particular focus on identifying
certain turning points, such as the transition from the early to the
later philosophy, or alternatively, the beginning and end of the middle
period. However, in retrospect, the substance of those disagreements is
much less significant than the fact that there was widespread, if tacit,
agreement that interpreting the “Middle Wittgenstein” was a matter of
giving an account of the development of his philosophy during those
years.10 Talking of the “Middle Wittgenstein,” or of the development
of his philosophy, may seem like a neutral way of describing this stage
of his career. However, those very expressions lend themselves to
thinking of Wittgenstein’s writing and teaching during those years as
structured in a certain way, as developing from a starting point to an
end point, from the early philosophy to the later philosophy, or from
the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations. The work done in
between, whether in his manuscript volumes, or the various collections
of remarks assembled in other manuscripts or typescripts, or in his

10
Leading examples include Hacker 1972, Kenny 1973, Hintikka and Hintikka
1986, Nyíri 1986 and 1992, Hilmy 1987, Pears 1987 and 1988, Monk 1990,
Rothhaupt 1996, Sedmak 1996, and Kienzler 1997.
Wittgenstein between the Tractatus and the Investigations 7

lectures, will then be seen as a matter of his taking a path that leads
away from the earlier masterpiece and toward the later one.
Joachim Schulte is one of the few writers on this topic to have drawn
attention to the particular difficulties that stand in the way of giving
one’s full and undivided attention to any one part of Wittgenstein’s
writing, and especially those texts written after the Tractatus and
before the Philosophical Investigations. He frames this challenge in
the following terms:

A general problem of reading and interpreting Wittgenstein [is] that it is

enormously difficult to read a text as a complete and unified work and at the
same time as a transitory stage within the author’s oeuvre as a whole. Early or
intermediate stages will appear as something superseded by later insights.
The first and last versions will be allotted special status while what happened
in between will appear to be of minor relevance.11

It is particularly difficult to give one’s full and undivided attention to any

one part of Wittgenstein’s writing from the 1930s, without seeing it as an
intermediate step between a well-known point of departure and an equally
familiar destination. It is only too easy to assume that what he wrote
during these years must either consist of steps toward familiar ideas in
the later work, or sets out transitional views that would soon be discarded.
However, during the first half of the 1930s, Wittgenstein frequently
explored ideas that he would later reject, and often made use of meth-
ods and techniques that are neither Tractarian, nor characteristic of
Wittgenstein’s later philosophy in general, and of the Philosophical
Investigations in particular. Indeed, in addition to the specific danger
Schulte identifies in the passage quoted above, that of seeing the inter-
mediate stages as superseded by later insights, we also have to beware
of the complementary pitfall of approaching the work from the 1930s
as a summary or outline of central ideas in the later work. Striking
examples of such “transitory stages” in Wittgenstein’s work in the
1930s that are discussed in this collection include the notions of the
calculus conception of language,12 the “logical structure” of a hypoth-
esis,13 “committing oneself” or “being committed” by one’s use of

11
Schulte 1998, 380.
12
See in this volume: Stern, ch. 1; Pichler, ch. 2; Boncompagni, ch. 4; Biletzki,
ch. 10.
13
See in this volume: Engelmann, ch. 3.
8 David G. Stern

language,14 and the distinction between the use of “I” as subject, and as
object.15
One group of Wittgenstein interpreters, including the early Baker,
Hacker, and Glock16 maintain that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy
emerged in the early 1930s, and that it is already clearly stated in
works by Wittgenstein and Waismann from 1932 to 1934.17 On this
reading, we can already find robust formulations of many central
commitments of the later Wittgenstein in his “middle period” writ-
ings. If one draws a dividing line in the early 1930s, then one will
presume that, other things being equal, all material written after that
point states the views of the “later Wittgenstein” and can be mined for
statements of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophical methods and
his views about the nature of grammar and rules of language. This
will lend substantial support to a reading of the Philosophical
Investigations on which the identification of grammatical rules, and
their use, in a memorable turn of phrase, to police the bounds of sense,
plays a central role.18
If we follow Hacker’s reading we will construe Wittgenstein, not
only in the early 1930s, but also throughout the rest of his career, as a
philosophical grammarian, using the rules of our ordinary language to
make clear the bounds of sense and so rule out certain philosophical
claims and theories as mistaken. In that case, we will be inclined to
draw a sharp line between scenarios that are logically possible, and thus
conceivable, on the one hand, and those that are logically impossible,
ruled out by the grammar of our language, on the other. Traditional
philosophy makes claims that may appear attractive, but on closer
examination they prove to be nonsense, for they break grammatical
rules. The task of the Wittgensteinian philosopher is, accordingly, to
provide arguments that make these errors clear.
At first sight, Cora Diamond’s much-discussed reading of
Wittgenstein,19 with its stress on the unity of his philosophy, and the
“resolute” interpretations of Wittgenstein’s work it has inspired may
14
See in this volume: Boncompagni, ch. 4.
15
See in this volume: Sluga, ch. 7; Child, ch. 8.
16
Baker and Hacker 1980, 1980a, 1985; Hacker 1972, 1990, 1996, 2012; Glock
1990, 1996, 2001a, 2007.
17
See Baker’s preface to VW.
18
Baker later described the view that he had once shared with Hacker as one on
which “Wittgenstein polices the bounds of sense” (Baker 2004, 94).
19
See e.g. Diamond 1991, Crary and Read 2000.
Wittgenstein between the Tractatus and the Investigations 9

appear to be contradicted by the fact that a significant part of his

writing from the 1930s turns on his criticism of his earlier views.
Early critics of her reading, including Hacker, observed that “defenders
of Diamond’s interpretation have produced no evidence at all from the
post-1929 documents to support their view.”20 Those critics also
argued that there was no trace of the argumentative strategy
Diamond attributes to the Tractatus in the Nachlass materials from
1929 and the early 1930s. Diamond has since replied that an insistence
on the unity of Wittgenstein’s philosophy can be reconciled with a
recognition that it did change and develop in crucial respects, especially
his conception of clarification.21 This approach, which Conant has
dubbed “mild mono-Wittgensteinianism,” faces, as he puts it, the
challenge of both doing “full justice to the profound discontinuity in
Wittgenstein’s thinking without neglecting . . . the extent to which it is
folded within a fundamental continuity in his philosophy” while also
doing “full justice to the profound continuity in his thinking without
minimizing . . . the extent to which it is folded within a fundamental
discontinuity in his philosophy.”22 With this acknowledgment of the
complex interplay of continuity and discontinuity in the development
of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, by not only Diamond and Conant, but
also other resolute readers such as Kuusela and Cahill, we have moved
a considerable distance from the radically unitary reading that
Diamond and other New Wittgensteinians originally seemed to be
advocating. Instead, we are back where we started, with the task of
mapping out the similarities and dissimilarities between Early, Middle,
and Later Wittgenstein, and looking for turning points in his writing.
On the other hand, if we follow Diamond and Cavell23 in reading
Wittgenstein as giving up the idea that it is the rules of our ordinary
language that enable us to demarcate sense and nonsense, we also have
to give up the correlative notion that there is a clear boundary between
sense and nonsense. Whether or not a particular form of words makes
sense does not simply depend on the rules of our language, but on the
particular circumstances in which we are drawn to utter them, and the
reasons we have for finding them attractive. Our attention turns
from the question of whether the words under examination are
20
Hacker 2001, 139; see also 126–140.
21
Diamond 2004; see also Conant 2007, 2011, Kuusela 2008, 2011, and Cahill
2011.
22
Conant 2007, 31–32; see also notes 19 and 136. 23 Cavell 1962, 1979.
10 David G. Stern

grammatically well-formed to the fantasies, or illusions, that motivate

us to say such things, and lead us to offer another form of words when it
turns out that our first formulation misfires.
In a discussion of the relationship of Wittgenstein’s teaching during
1932–1935 to his earlier and later philosophy, Alice Ambrose observed
that both of the standard approaches to Wittgenstein’s philosophy—
the one-Wittgenstein view on which “Wittgenstein’s concerns, earlier
and later, are conceived as being the same” and the two-Wittgensteins
view that there is a “discontinuity between the Tractatus and the
Investigations” – “ignore the iconoclastic ideas which came out in
lectures, dictations and discussions” during those years.24 To regard
Wittgenstein’s philosophy as fundamentally continuous is to fail to
recognize that a “quite new conception of philosophical statements
was being formulated, and was illustrated in the treatment of certain
problems.”25 But to see Wittgenstein as the author of two very different
philosophies, an early one set out in the Tractatus and a later one in the
Philosophical Investigations, still has the effect of pushing the work he
did during those years out of sight, she contended. If one only reads the
lecture notes, dictations, and other writings from that period for those
places where he criticizes his own earlier work, or moves toward his
later philosophy, one will miss much of what is most interesting, and
distinctive, about his teaching in the first half of the 1930s. As Volker
Munz argues in his contribution to this collection, it is “misleading to
only approach the middle period as a link between the early and later
Wittgenstein” because he not only rejected central Tractarian views
and began to introduce new ideas and methods. He “also developed
and discussed issues in a very different way from anything in his later
writings. Such topics include his treatment of solipsism, the ‘I’, the
concept of pain, and the relation between rules and general descriptions
of human behaviour . . . The middle period must, therefore, be seen as a
phase in its own right, and not merely as a transition from the early to
the later Wittgenstein.”26 Many other contributors to this collection
also make the case that Wittgenstein’s discussion of philosophy of their
chosen topic in the early 1930s has a distinctive character that is
significantly different from anything found in his earlier or later work.

24
Ambrose 1972, 16–17. In Flowers 1999, 2, 266–267; 2016, 2, 553.
25
Ambrose 1972, 17. In Flowers 1999, 2, 266; 2016, 2, 553.
26
See Munz, this volume, ch. 9, section 1.
Wittgenstein between the Tractatus and the Investigations 11

Mauro Engelmann is the principal contemporary advocate for an

approach to the middle Wittgenstein on which his work during these
years is distinctively different from both the early and the later philo-
sophy. In Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Development: Phenomenology,
Grammar, Method, and the Anthropological View (2013), he argues
that Wittgenstein developed several very different philosophies in the
early 1930s. On his reading, each successive philosophy is best under-
stood as the product of a sequence of important changes, or breaks,
from his previous view, each of which marks a different stage in a
complex process of adaptation of the preceding position.
Consequently, he has proposed a much more fine-grained account of
Wittgenstein’s intellectual journey during these years, on which it is
best understood as moving between several different philosophies, each
set out in a focal unfinished work (RLF, PR, BT, PG, BLBK, BRBK, etc.)
within the period from 1929 to 1936.
Like Munz, Engelmann, and a number of other contributors to this
collection, I believe that the “middle period” is best understood as a
distinctive phase in Wittgenstein’s work from the first half of the 1930s
that cannot be accounted for in terms of the dissolution of the
Tractarian approach to philosophy and the emergence of the “Later
Wittgenstein.” Because Wittgenstein’s thought was changing rapidly
and repeatedly during the first half of the 1930s, his writing from this
period is a highly unreliable guide if it is taken as setting out his “later
views.”27 While it can tell us a great deal about Wittgenstein’s outlook
at the time, it is not a settled set of convictions that he maintained in
later years. Wittgenstein was drawn, during this transitional period in
the early 1930s, toward a calculus conception of philosophy, on which
its aim is to clarify, in a systematic way, the rules of our language in a
philosophical grammar. However, by the time he composed the first
draft of the Philosophical Investigations in 1936 he had given up this
conception of philosophical grammar in favour of piecemeal criticism
of specific philosophical problems.28

27
Concentrating on continuities in wording, and especially on early formulations
of key passages in the later work, as Hacker does, can lead one to overlook deep
discontinuities between the use of those words in earlier and later contexts.
28
Versions of this reading can be found in Stern 1991, 2004, ch. 5.2, 2005, 2010,
2010a, and 2017; Schulte 2002, 2011; Pichler 2004, 2007; and Engelmann
2011, 2013. See also Szeltzner 2013, which argues that Wittgenstein moves
from talk of grammar in a very general way in The Big Typescript and Brown
12 David G. Stern

Like Fogelin and Sluga, I believe that if we are to do justice to the full
range of positions set out in Wittgenstein’s writing, we must acknowl-
edge that Wittgenstein was continually moving back and forth between
proto-philosophical theorizing and Pyrrhonian criticism of such
theories, not only in his middle period, but from first to last.29 As a
result, one can selectively marshal texts from every stage of his career
that show him defending philosophical theories, and one can also
construe those texts as attacking such theorizing. This, in turn, is why
defenders of a traditional reading, such as Hacker, have amassed so
much evidence that Wittgenstein was always committed to setting out
the rules of our language, yet defenders of a “resolute” reading, such as
Diamond, draw a diametrically opposed conclusion. Rather than set-
tling for one or the other of these two opposed readings, or looking for
a decisive dividing line that clearly separates an earlier Wittgenstein
who proposed various philosophical theories, and a later Pyrrhonian
Wittgenstein who resolutely criticized such theories, we need to recog-
nize that Wittgenstein felt the pull of both these impulses – the attrac-
tions of philosophical theorizing, and the critical attack on those
theories – throughout his life. We can see the dialectic between these
impulses at work in every stage of his career, from his 1914–1916
notebooks to the manuscripts written in the last years of his life.
However, it takes on a particularly central role in the transitional
period that begins with his return to Cambridge in 1929 and ends
with the composition of the Early Investigations in Norway in 1936–
1937.30

4. Wittgenstein’s Influences in the 1930s

It is often taken for granted that after Wittgenstein moved to
Cambridge in 1929, he was, for the most part, a solitary philosopher
who was not much influenced or affected by his contemporaries. For
instance, G. H. von Wright contrasted the young Wittgenstein who had

Book, to considering specific examples of usage in his later discussion of

grammar.
29
See Fogelin 1987, ch. 15 and 1994, 3–12 and 205–222; Sluga 2004; Stern 2004,
ch. 2, and 170.
30
Most of the first three sections of this introduction are based on Stern 2018; a
number of expository paragraphs are taken from the editorial introduction to M.
Wittgenstein between the Tractatus and the Investigations 13

learned from Frege and Russell, and whose “problems were in part
theirs” with the later Wittgenstein, who had, he thought,

no ancestors in the history of thought. His work signals a radical departure

from previously existing paths of philosophy . . . The later Wittgenstein did
not receive an inspiration from outside like that which the earlier
Wittgenstein obtained from Frege and Russell.31

Certainly, if one approaches the question of a philosopher’s relation-

ship to other philosophers as a matter of “ancestry,” or a family tree of
the principal relations between philosophical generations, then it is true
that no-one influenced Wittgenstein after his return to Cambridge in
1929, in the far-reaching and comprehensive way that Frege and
Russell inspired him when he was a student there before the First
World War. However, one important qualification to von Wright’s
claim that no-one influenced the later Wittgenstein in the way that
Frege and Russell influenced the early Wittgenstein is that those philo-
sophers still played the role of father figures for the later Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein’s “departure from previously existing paths” is most
often a departure from paths mapped out by Frege and Russell.
Furthermore, there are many ways in which a philosopher can be part
of a philosophical community, or intimately connected with and
dependent on other philosophers, that are not a matter of “ancestry”
in von Wright’s sense of the term. It is unfortunate that von Wright’s
otherwise excellent essay on Wittgenstein’s life and work greatly over-
stated the extent to which Wittgenstein was isolated from his contem-
poraries, and served to foster the myth that they did not have a
significant impact on his thought.
Of course, Wittgenstein himself was the first person to speak of his
life in Cambridge as though it were entirely self-contained. Con Drury
remembered a discussion with Wittgenstein in 1931 in which
Wittgenstein told Drury that it was essential that Drury get away
from Cambridge at once, because “There is no oxygen in Cambridge
for you. It doesn’t matter to me, as I manufacture my own oxygen.”32
Like most metaphors, Wittgenstein’s was literally untrue: Wittgenstein
had breathed the Cambridge air for each Cambridge term from Lent
1929 onward. But it was also deeply misleading. Wittgenstein was
materially supported by Trinity College, which had provided him
31 32
von Wright 1984, 14, 15. Drury 1984, 121; 1999, 209.
14 David G. Stern

with a five-year research fellowship, room and board, and by the Moral
Sciences Faculty, which gave him the opportunity to lecture as he chose.
Littlewood and Hardy, the two leading mathematicians in Cambridge,
wanted him to teach their students; Moore, the most distinguished
philosopher in Cambridge, attended his lectures and met with him
weekly to discuss philosophy. On his arrival, Wittgenstein had
attracted the attention of Cambridge philosophy students, and many
of them took a lively interest in his work, so much so that other faculty
began to worry whether his influence was for the best.
Many of the chapters in this collection draw our attention to the
variety of ways in which Wittgenstein was influenced in the 1930s, not
only by his reading of a remarkably wide range of authors, both
contemporary and historical, but also by his interaction with those
around him. Kienzler, Sluga, and Stern, all give extended attention to
Wittgenstein’s connections with Moore; Boncompagni, Goldfarb,
Schulte, and Stern, all discuss his relationship with Ramsey.
Engelmann considers Wittgenstein’s response to Russell’s discussion
of the skeptical scenario in which the world was created five minutes
ago in his Outline of Philosophy (1927); Sluga discusses Wittgenstein’s
reaction to Russell’s Analysis of Mind (1921). Biletzki and Schulte both
look at Wittgenstein’s reading of Frazer’s Golden Bough; Kienzler and
Schulte both discuss Wittgenstein’s focus on Spengler in the early
1930s; Goldfarb and Kienzler both look at Wittgenstein’s relationship
to Schlick. Boncompagni reflects on the ways in which Wittgenstein’s
philosophy of mind is in dialogue with Ogden and Richards’ causalist
account, and William James’s pragmatism. Appelqvist follows a long
tradition of reading Wittgenstein as influenced by Kant, but concen-
trates her attention on the Critique of the Power of Judgment, rather
than the Critique of Pure Reason. Boncompagni, Kienzler, Marion and
Okada, and Sluga, each consider different ways in which Wittgenstein
responds to Hertz. Wittgenstein’s responses to themes from two sym-
posia at the Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind
Association in July 1932 – “The Limits of Psychology in Aesthetics”
(Louis Arnaud Reid, Helen Knight, and C. E. M. Joad), and “Is
Goodness a Quality?” (Moore, H. W. B. Joseph, and A. E. Taylor) –
are discussed by Appelqvist and Richter respectively. The chapters by
Goldfarb and Marion and Okada both examine Wittgenstein’s reading
of the opening of an important paper by Skolem (1967b) and its
significance for understanding his work on mathematical induction.
Another random document with
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so attracted. So far as we know, light has no fascination for Insects
except when they are on the wing. The phenomenon is not
understood at present.

The food of Blattidae is believed to be of a very mixed character,

though Brunner considers that dead animal matter is the natural
nutriment of the members of this family. It is well known that the
common cockroach eats a variety of peculiar substances; its
individuals undoubtedly have the somewhat too economical habit of
eating their own cast skins and empty egg-capsules, but in this they
only act like many other much admired Insects. S. orientalis is
gregarious, and the individuals are very amicable with one another;
small specimens sit on, or run over the big individuals, and even
nestle under them without their displaying the least resentment. The
common cockroach is a rather amusing pet, as the creatures
occasionally assume most comical attitudes, especially when
cleaning their limbs; this they do somewhat after the fashion of cats,
extending the head as far as they can in the desired direction, and
then passing a leg or antenna through the mouth; or they comb other
parts of the body with the spines on the legs, sometimes twisting and
distorting themselves considerably in order to reach some not very
accessible part of the body.

There is very little information extant as to the domestic Blattidae

found in parts of the world outside Europe, but it seems that there
are numerous species that prefer the dwellings of man, even though
they only tolerate the owners. Belt says[159] "the cockroaches that
infest the houses of the tropics are very wary, as they have
numerous enemies—birds, rats, scorpions, and spiders; their long
trembling antennae are ever stretched out, vibrating as if feeling the
very texture of the air around them; and their long legs quickly take
them out of danger. Sometimes I tried to chase one of them up to a
corner where on a wall a large cockroach-eating spider stood
motionless looking out for his prey; the cockroach would rush away
from me in the greatest fear, but as soon as it came within a foot of
its mortal foe nothing would force it onwards, but back it would
double, facing all the danger from me rather than advance nearer to
its natural enemy." To this we may add that cockroaches are the
natural prey of the fossorial Hymenoptera of the group Ampulicides,
and that these wasps sometimes enter houses in search of the
Insects.

Fig. 127.—Nocticola simoni. A, male; A1, tegmen and rudiment of wing;

A2, front of head; B, female. The cerci are broken, in B the right
one is restored in outline. (After Bolivar.)

We have already noticed the considerable difference that exists in

many cases between the sexes of the same species. This is
sometimes carried to such an extent that nothing but direct
observation could make us believe that the males and females are of
one kin. Fig. 118 (p. 220) shows a case of this kind. Though the
young as a rule are excessively similar to the adults, yet this is by no
means invariably the case. In some of the more amply winged forms,
such as Blabera, the young is about as different from the adult as the
female of Heterogamia is from its male. In Blattidae it is always the
case—so far as is yet known—that when there is a difference as
regards the alar organs between the two sexes, it is the male that
has these structures most developed, and this even when they can
be of little or no use for purposes of flight.

Among the most interesting forms of the family are the two species
of the genus Nocticola, recently discovered by M. Simon in caves in
the Philippine Islands.[160] They are amongst the smallest of the
Orthoptera, the male being scarcely ⅛ of an inch long. In the larval
state of N. simoni the ocular organs exist as three ocelli, or facets,
on each side of the head, and in the perfect state the number is
increased somewhat, as shown in Fig. 127, A2. In the second
species of the genus the female is quite blind (the male being still
undiscovered). The fenestræ in Nocticola are absent; the tegmina
and wings are totally wanting in the female (Fig. 127, B), but are
present in a very peculiar condition in the male (Fig. 127, A1). There
are other anomalies in the structure of these cavernicolous Insects,
the cerci being apparently of peculiar structure, and the spines of the
legs more hair-like than usual. The condition of the eyes is
remarkable; the peculiarity in their development is worthy of study.

Fig. 128.—Corydia petiveriana, with tegmina extended, A; closed, B.

To those who are acquainted with Blattidae only through our

domestic "black beetle" it may seem absurd to talk of elegance in
connexion with cockroaches. Yet there are numerous forms in which
grace and beauty are attained, and some exhibit peculiarities of
ornamentation that are worthy of attention. Corydia petiveriana (Fig.
128) is a common cockroach in East India. It has an effective system
of coloration, the under wings and the sides of the body being vividly
coloured with orange yellow; when the tegmina are closed the upper
surface of the body is of a velvet-black colour, with cream-coloured
marks; these spots are different on the two tegmina, as shown in Fig.
128, A, but are so arranged that when the tegmina are closed (Fig.
128, B) a symmetrical pattern is produced by the combination of the
marks of the two differently spotted tegmina. It is very curious to
notice the great difference in the colour of the part of the right
tegmen that is overlapped by the edge of the left one; this part of the
tegmen being coloured orange yellow in harmony with the wings.
The result of the remarkable differentiation of the colours of the two
tegmina may be summarised by saying that on the right one the
colour of a part is abruptly contrasted with that of the rest of the
organ, so as to share the system of coloration of the under-wings
and body, while the corresponding part of the other tegmen is very
different, and completes the system of symmetrical ornamentation of
the upper surface.

Many other members of the Blattidae have an elegant appearance,

and depart more or less from their fellows in structural characters,
with the result of adding to their graceful appearance; in such cases,
so far as at present known, these Insects are brightly coloured. Thus
Hypnorna amoena (Fig. 129) has the antennae banded in white,
black, and red, while the overlapping part of the tegmina is arranged
so as to bring the line of junction between them nearly straight along
the middle line of the body, and thus produce a more symmetrical
appearance than we find in other cockroaches. The head in this
Insect is not so concealed as usual, and this undoubtedly adds
somewhat to the effective appearance of this cockroach. This
visibility of the front of the head in Hypnorna is not, as would be
supposed, owing to its being less inflexed than usual. On the
contrary, the head is quite as strongly inflexed as it is in other
Blattidae, but the part just at the front of the thorax is unusually
elongate, so that the eyes are exposed and the Insect has a larger
field of vision. This interesting Insect belongs to the tribe
Oxyhaloides [Plectopterinae Sauss.], in which group the most highly
developed folded wings occur.

Fig. 129.—Hypnorna amoena. Central America. Tribe Oxyhaloides.

(After de Saussure.)
The wingless forms never exhibit the grace and elegance possessed
by some of the more active of the winged Blattidae. One of them,
Gromphadorhina portentosa, found in Madagascar (Fig. 130), is a
very robust Insect, and attains a length of 78 millim.—somewhat
more than 3 inches. This Insect has projections on the thorax that
remind us of the horns that exist in some of the Lamellicorn beetles.

Little has been yet written as to the resemblances of Blattidae to

other species of their own family, or to other creatures, but it is
probable that such similarities will be found to prevail to a
considerable extent. W. A. Forbes has called attention[161] to the
larva of a Blattid from Brazil as being remarkable for its superficial
resemblance to an Isopod crustacean. Some of the wingless forms
have a great resemblance to the small rolling-up Myriapods of the
group Glomerides; Pseudoglomeris fornicata, of which we figure the
female (Fig. 131), has received its name from this resemblance. The
females of the S. African genus Derocalymma possess this Glomerid
appearance, and have a peculiar structure of the prothorax,
admitting of a more complete protection of the head. Brunner states
that the wingless kinds of Derocalymma roll themselves up like
wood-lice. In many of the forms of this tribe—Perisphaeriides—the
males are winged, though the females are so like Myriapods.
According to de Saussure[162] the gigantic Megaloblatta rufipes
bears an extreme resemblance in appearance to the large
cockroaches of the genus Blabera.

Fig. 130.—Gromphadorhina portentosa, × ⅔. Tribe Perisphaeriides.

(After Brunner.)

Fig. 131.—Pseudoglomeris fornicata, ♀. Burma. Tribe Perisphaeriides.

(After Brunner.)
Some of the species of Holocompsa remind us strongly of Hemiptera
of the family Capsidae; they have an arrangement of colours similar
to what prevails in that group, and their tegmina and wings which, as
being those of Blattids may be said to be abnormally formed,
resemble in texture and the distribution of the venation those of the
Hemiptera. These Insects are closely allied to Diaphana, of which
genus we have figured a species (Fig. 122).

There is very little evidence on which to base an estimate of the

number of species of Blattidae existing in the world at present.
Probably the number extant in collections may amount to 1000 or
thereabouts, and the total existing in the world may be as many as
5000. The species of Blattidae cannot tolerate cold, and are
consequently only numerous in tropical regions. Europe possesses
about twenty species, and in Britain there are only three that are truly
native; these are all small Insects belonging to the genus Ectobia,
and living out of doors, amongst leaves, under bushes, and in
various other places. We have, however, several other species that
have been introduced by the agency of man, and these all live under
cover, where there is artificial warmth and they are protected from
the inclemencies of the winter season. The commonest of these
forms is Stilopyga orientalis, the "black beetle" of our kitchens and
bakehouses. This Insect is said to have been brought to Europe from
"Asia" about 200 years ago, but the evidence as to its introduction,
and as to the country of which it is really a native, is very slight. It is
indeed said[163] that S. orientalis has been found in peat in
Schleswig-Holstein. Periplaneta americana is a larger Insect, and is
common in some places; it is apparently the species that is most
usually found on board ships, where it sometimes multiplies
enormously, and entirely devours stores of farinaceous food to which
it obtains access: it is known that sometimes a box or barrel
supposed to contain biscuits, on being opened is found to have its
edible contents entirely replaced by a mass of living cockroaches.
Fortunately Periplaneta americana has not spread widely in this
country, though it is found in great numbers in limited localities; one
of the best known of which is the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's
Park at London. Periplaneta australasiae is very similar to P.
americana, but has a yellow mark on the shoulder of each tegmen.
This has obtained a footing in some of the glass-houses in the
Botanic Gardens at Cambridge and Kew; and it is said to be fairly
well established in Belfast. Another of our introduced domestic
cockroaches is Phyllodromia germanica, a much smaller Insect than
the others we have mentioned. It has only established itself at a few
places in this country, but it is extremely abundant in some parts of
Northern and Eastern Europe. It has been increasing in numbers in
Vienna, where, according to Brunner, it is displacing Stilopyga
orientalis. In addition to these, Rhyparobia maderae and species of
the genus Blabera have been met with in our docks, and are
possibly always to be found there. They are Insects of much larger
size than those we have mentioned. We figure the alar organs of one
of these species of Blabera of the natural size: the species in this
genus are extremely similar to one another. Blaberae are known in
the West Indies as drummers, it being supposed that they make a
noise at night,[164] but details in confirmation of this statement are
wanting.

Fig. 132.—Alar organs of Blabera sp. A, tegmen; B, wing.

It is a remarkable fact that no satisfactory reasons can be assigned

for the prevalence of one rather than another of these domestic
cockroaches in particular localities. It does not seem to depend at all
on size, or on the period of development, for the three species
Stilopyga orientalis, Periplaneta americana, and Phyllodromia
germanica, which are the most abundant, differ much in these
respects, and replace one another in particular localities, so that it
does not appear that any one is gaining a permanent or widespread
superiority as compared with another. There are, however, no
sufficient records on these points, and further investigation may
reveal facts of which we are at present ignorant, and which will throw
some light on this subject. We may remark that Mr. Brindley has
found it more difficult to obtain hatching of the young from the egg-
capsules of Periplaneta americana and Phyllodromia germanica at
Cambridge, than from those of Stilopyga orientalis.

Although much work has been done on the embryology of Blattidae,

the subject is still very incomplete. The recent memoirs of
Cholodkovsky[165] on Phyllodromia germanica contain so much of
general interest as to the development of the external parts of the
body that we may briefly allude to them. The earliest appearance of
segmentation appears to be due to the centralisation of numerous
cells round certain points in the ventral plate. The segmentation of
the anterior parts is first distinct, and the appearance of the
appendages of the body takes place in regular order from before
backwards, the antennae appearing first; the mandibles, however,
become distinct only subsequent to the maxillae and thoracic
appendages. There are in the course of the development
appendages to each segment of the body (he counts eleven
abdominal segments); the cerci develop in a similar manner to the
antennae; the first pair of abdominal appendages—at first similar to
the others—afterwards assume a peculiar stalked form. The
abdominal appendages subsequently disappear, with the exception
of the ninth pair, which form the ventral styles, and the eleventh pair,
which become the cerci. The last ventral segment is said to be
formed by the union of the tenth and eleventh embryonic ventral
segments.

Fig. 133.—A, Tegmen(?) of Palaeoblattina douvillei; B, of Etoblattina

manebachensis. (After Brauer and Scudder.)
As regards their Palaeontological forms Blattidae are amongst the
most interesting of Insects, for it is certain that in the Carboniferous
epoch they existed in considerable number and variety. A still earlier
fossil has been found in the Silurian sandstone of Calvados; it
consists of a fragment (Fig. 133, A), looking somewhat like an
imperfect tegmen of a Blattid; it was described by Brongniart under
the name of Palaeoblattina douvillei, and referred by him, with some
doubt, to this family. Brauer has, however, expressed the opinion[166]
that the fragment more probably belonged to an Insect like the mole-
cricket, and in view of this discrepancy of authorities we may be
pardoned for expressing our own opinion to the effect that the relic
has no connexion with the Insecta. The figure given by Scudder[167]
has not, however, so uninsect-like an appearance as that we have
copied from Brauer. Whatever may prove to be the case with regard
to Palaeoblattina, it is certain, as we have already said, that in the
Palaeozoic epoch Insects similar to our existing cockroaches were
abundant, their remains being found in plenty in the coal-measures
both of Europe and North America. Fig. 133, B, shows a fossil
tegmen of Etoblattina manebachensis from the upper Carboniferous
beds of Ilmenau in Germany. It will be noticed that the disposition of
the nervures is very much like that which may be seen in some of
our existing Blattidae (cf. the tegmen of Blabera, Fig. 132, A), the
vena dividens (a) being similarly placed, as is also the mediastinal
vein on the front part of the organ. The numerous carboniferous
Blattidae have been separated as a distinct Order of Insects by
Scudder under the name Palaeoblattariae, but apparently rather on
theoretical grounds than because of any ascertained important
structural distinctions. He also divided the Palaeoblattariae into two
groups, Mylacridae and Blattinariae, the former of which was
supposed to be peculiar to America. Brongniart has, however,
recently discovered that in the Carboniferous deposits of Commentry
in France Mylacridae are as common as in America. This latter
authority also states that some of the females of these fossil
Blattidae are distinguished by the presence of an elongate exserted
organ at the end of the body. He considers this to have been an
ovipositor by which the eggs were deposited in trees or other
receptacles, after a manner that is common in certain Orthoptera at
the present day. If this view be correct these Carboniferous Insects
must have been very different from the Blattidae of our own epoch,
one of whose marked characteristics is the deposition of the eggs in
a capsule formed in the body of the parent.

In the strata of the secondary epoch remains of Blattidae have also

been discovered in both Europe and America, in Oolitic, Liassic, and
Triassic deposits. From the Tertiary strata, on the other hand,
comparatively few species have been brought to light. A few have
been discovered preserved in amber.

Fig. 134.—Front leg of Periplaneta australasiae.

The classification of the Blattidae is attended with considerable

difficulty on account of the numerous wingless forms, and of the
extreme difference in the organisation of the two sexes of many
species. It has, however, been brought to a fairly satisfactory state
by the reiterated labours of Brunner von Wattenwyl, and we
reproduce his recently perfected exposition of their characters. His
first division is made by means of a structure which is very easily
observed, viz. whether the femora are armed with spines, as in Fig.
134, or not. The terms used in connexion with the wings and other
parts of the body we have already explained.

Brunner's system is adopted by de Saussure,[168] who, however,

proposes to replace the names Ectobiides and Oxyhaloides by
Anaplectinae and Plectopterinae. He also proposes to apply the
generic name Blatta to the Insect that is now so frequently called
Phyllodromia germanica in zoological works. If that view be adopted,
Brunner's group Phyllodromiides will be called Blattides.

Table of the tribes of Blattidae, after Brunner:—

1. Femora spiny beneath.[169]

2. The last ventral plate of the female large, without valves.
3. Supra-anal lamina of both male and female transverse, narrow.
Wings, when present, furnished with a triangular apical field.
Posterior femora unarmed beneath, or armed with two spines on
the anterior margin. Egg-capsules furnished with a longitudinal
suture. Tribe 1. Ectobiides. [Anaplectinae Saussure.]
3′. Supra-anal lamina of each sex more or less produced, triangular, or
emarginate. Wings, when present, without apical field. Posterior
femora with both edges spiny.
4. Supra-anal lamina of each sex triangular, not notched. Cerci
projecting much beyond this lamina.
5. Pronotum and elytra smooth (i.e. without peculiarity of surface
other than punctuation). The radial nervure of the wing giving
off several parallel branches, pectinate on the anterior margin
(except in the genus Abrodiaeta). Tarsal joints without pads.
Tribe 2. Phyllodromiides. [Blattinae Saussure.]
5′. Pronotum and elytra holosericeous. Radial nervure of the wings
giving off irregular branches on the anterior margin (ulnar vein
many-branched). Tarsal joints furnished with pads. Tribe 3.
Nyctiborides.
4′. Supra-anal lamina of males more or less four-sided, with obtuse
angles, of females broad, rounded, or lobed. Cerci not projecting
beyond the lamina. (Tarsal joints with distinct pads.) Ulnar
nervure of the wings giving off parallel branches towards the vena
dividens. Tribe 4. Epilamprides.
2′. The last ventral plate of the female furnished with valves. Tribe 5.
Periplanetides.[170] (Fig. 119, Periplaneta australasiae.)
1′. Femora unarmed beneath. (In the tribe Panesthiides the anterior femora
are frequently armed with two spines.)
 2. Supra-anal lamina of each sex more or less produced, posterior margin
notched.
3. A distinct pad between the claws. Tribe 6. Panchlorides.
3′. No pad between the claws, or only an excessively small one.
4. Wings with a folded fan-like anal field. Pronotum smooth. Tribe 7.
Blaberides. (Fig. 132, Blabera sp. wings.)
4′. Anal field of the wing with a single fold. Pronotum more or less
pilose. Tribe 8. Corydiides. (Fig. 128, Corydia petiveriana. Fig.
118, Heterogamia aegyptiaca.)
2′. Supra-anal lamina of each sex, short, transverse, posterior margin
straight or rounded.
3. Subgenital lamina of the male somewhat produced, furnished with a
single style. Tarsal claws with a distinct pad (except in the genus
Paranauphoeta).
4. Anterior portion of the wings pointed, either the apical field of the
wing very much produced, or the wings twice as long as the
tegmina, folded in repose. Tribe 9. Oxyhaloides. [Plectopterinae
Saussure.] (Fig. 129, Hypnorna amoena.)
4′. Anterior portion of wing, when present, rounded, with no apical
field. Tribe 10. Perisphaeriides. (Fig. 130, Gromphadorhina
portentosa; Fig. 131, Pseudoglomeris fornicata.)
3′. Subgenital lamina of males extremely small, without styles. No pad
between claws. Tribe 11. Panesthiides.

To the above tribes another one—Geoscapheusides—has been

recently added by Tepper,[171] for an extraordinary Australian Insect
of fossorial habits, with front legs formed somewhat like those of
Gryllotalpa.

CHAPTER X

ORTHOPTERA CONTINUED—MANTIDAE—SOOTHSAYERS
 Fam. IV. Mantidae—Soothsayers or Praying Insects.

Orthoptera with exserted but deflexed head and elongate

prothorax, the first pair of legs largely developed, raptorial, the
coxae elongate, free, femora and tibiae armed with spines:
second and third pair of legs simple and similar; the tarsi five-
jointed, without a pad (arolium) between the claws; a pair of
jointed cerci near the extremity of the body.

The Mantidae are an extensive family of Orthoptera, showing

extreme variety in the shapes and outlines of the body, and
characterised by the very remarkable front legs; the function of these
legs being to seize and hold their prey, which consists of living
Insects, Mantidae being carnivorous and highly voracious.

The labium is deeply divided, each half exhibiting a very near

approach to the structure of a maxilla; there is a large membranous
lingua reposing on the inner face of the lower lip. The head is quite
free from the thorax, its front part being deflexed, and even
somewhat inflexed, so that the mouth is directed downwards and
somewhat backwards: it is very mobile, being connected to the
thorax by a comparatively slender neck, which is, however,
concealed by the pronotum. There are two large, prominent eyes,
the antennae are frequently very slender, but they sometimes differ
according to sex, and in some genera are pectinate in the male; just
above and between their insertion are three ocelli placed in a
triangle, two above, one below; between the antennae and the
clypeus there is an interval called the scutellar space. In some forms
of Mantidae the head assumes most extraordinary shapes; the eyes
may become elongate and horn-like; there may be a projection
between them bearing the ocelli, and attaining occasionally a great
length; the scutellar space also may have a remarkable
development, the whole thus forming a peculiar ornamental
structure, as in Fig. 136.
 Fig. 135.—Deroplatys sarawaca, female. Borneo. (After Westwood.)

The prothorax is elongate, but there are a few genera, e.g.

Eremiaphila, in which it is exceptionally short, and there are several
others in which the elongate form is more or less masked by
foliaceous expansions of the sides. The pronotum shows near the
front a transverse depression or seam, which marks the position of
an internal chitinous ridge. The anterior legs are inserted near the
front of the prosternum, which extends less far forwards than the
pronotum does; the posterior part of the prosternum is very elongate,
and is completely separated from the anterior part by the base of the
coxae and the membranes attached to them; the pronotum and
sternum are closely connected at the sides till near the posterior part
where they diverge, the space so formed being occupied by a
membrane in which the prothoracic stigma is situated. The
mesothorax is as long as broad, and the front wings are attached to
the whole length of the sides; the mesosternum is a triangular piece
pointed behind, and bearing very large side-pieces, to the hinder
portion of which the middle coxae are attached; these latter are large
and quite free, and repose on the metasternum which they cover; the
mesothoracic stigma may be detected as a slit situated on a slight
prominence just behind and a little below the membranous hind-
margin of the tegmen. The metathorax differs comparatively little in
size and structure from the mesothorax; the membranous hind wings
are attached to the sides of the notum along nearly the whole length
of the latter. The abdomen is moderately long; in each sex ten dorsal
plates may be detected, and there is a pair of ringed cerci projecting
from beneath the sides of the tenth plate. The number of ventral
plates is more difficult to verify, the first one being much reduced;
eight other plates can be demonstrated in the male and six in the
female.

Fig. 136.—Head of Harpax variegatus, seen from the front.

The anterior legs are formed in a remarkable manner in the

Mantidae, and are, in fact, the most characteristic feature of the
family. Attached near the front of the thorax there is a very long coxa,
to the apex of which is articulated the triangular trochanter; this
bears the elongate femur, which is furnished on its lower face with
sharp spines and teeth; the tibia which follows is much shorter and
smaller than the femur; its lower face bears also an armature of
teeth, and it is so articulated with the femur that it can be completely
closed thereon, its teeth fitting in among those of the femur (Fig. 137,
B); the latter has one or more longer spines overlapping the apical
part of the tibia when contracted. The tarsus is slender, five-jointed,
without pad. The other two pairs of legs are simple; the hinder
usually a little the longer, and in some species that possess powers
of leaping (Ameles), with the femora a little thicker at the base.
 Fig. 137.—Front leg of Empusa pauperata, female: A, with tibia
extended and tarsus wanting; B, more magnified (the basal parts
removed), showing the mode of closure.

The alar organs of the Mantidae are as regards the nervures and
areas fairly similar to those of the Blattidae. The tegmina are usually
narrow, and exhibit three well-marked areas; the one in front or
external (according as the wing is expanded or closed) is the
mediastinal area; it is usually more elongate and occupies a larger
portion of the surface of the tegmen than in Blattidae. The middle
area, forming the larger part of the wing, is occupied by the branches
of the radial and ulnar nervures. The third area, the anal, possesses
a sort of appendage in the form of a small space of a more delicately
membranous nature at the inner part of the base. The tegmina are
often more or less leaf-like in texture and consistence; this character
is as a rule not very marked, but there are a few species with the
tegmina very like foliage, this being more marked in the female; in
some, if not in all, of these cases the mediastinal area is
considerably increased. One tegmen overlaps the other, as in
Blattidae, but to a less extent, and the correlative asymmetry is but
slight: there is frequently a pallid spot close to the main vein on the
principal area, nearer to the base than to the extremity. The hind
wings are more ample than the front, and of much more delicate
consistence; they possess numerous veins converging to the base;
the anterior part of the wing is firmer in consistence, and its veins are
more numerously furcate; there are many more or less distinct
minute cross-veinlets, and an elegant tinting is not infrequent. They
close in a fan-like manner, transverse folding being unknown in the
family.

But little has been written on the internal anatomy of the Mantidae.
Dufour has described only very partially that of M. religiosa. The
salivary glands are largely developed, salivary receptacles exist; the
alimentary canal possesses eight elongate coecal diverticula placed
on the chylific ventricle; there are about one hundred Malphigian
tubules. In each ovary there are about 40 egg-tubes, and they are
joined at their bases in clusters of about half a dozen; each cluster
has a common sinus; these sinuses are placed at intervals along a
tube, which is one of two branches whose union forms the oviduct;
there are a large number of "serific glands" of two kinds in the
female. The testes are unusually complex in their structure.

According to Schindler[172] the Malphigian tubes in Mantis are not

inserted, as usual, at the base of the intestine, but on the intestine
itself at about one-third of its length from the base. There is some
doubt about this observation. Schindler considers the fact, if it be
such, unique.

The eggs of the Mantidae are deposited in a singular manner: the

female, placing the extremity of the body against a twig or stone,
emits some foam-like matter in which the eggs are contained. This
substance dries and forms the ootheca; whilst attaining a sufficient
consistence it is maintained in position by the extremity of the body
and the tips of the elytra, and it is shaped and fashioned by these
parts. The eggs are not, as might be supposed, distributed at
random through the case, but are lodged in symmetrically-arranged
chambers, though how these chambers come into existence by the
aid of so simple a mode of construction does not appear. The
capsule is hard; it quite conceals the eggs, which might very
naturally be supposed to be efficiently protected by their covering:
this does not, however, appear to be the case, as it is recorded that
they are subject to the attacks of Hymenopterous parasites. The time
that elapses after the eggs are laid and before they hatch varies
greatly according to circumstances. In France, Mantis religiosa
deposits its eggs in September, but they do not hatch until the
following June; while in E. India the young of another species of
Mantis emerge from the eggs about twenty days after these have
been deposited. Trimen has recorded some particulars as to the
formation of its egg-case by a Mantis in S. Africa. This specimen
constructed four nests of eggs at intervals of about a fortnight, and
Trimen states that the four were "as nearly as possible of the same
size and of precisely similar shape." He also describes its mode of
feeding, and says that it was fond of house-flies, and would eat
"blue-bottles," i.e. Musca vomitoria, but if while eating one of the
latter a house-fly were introduced, the "blue-bottle" was generally
dropped, even though it might be in process of being devoured. The
young have to escape from the chambers in which they are confined
in these egg-cases; they do so in a most curious manner; not by the
use of the feet, but by means of spines directed backwards on the
cerci and legs, so that when the body is agitated advance is made in
only one direction. The eggs last deposited are said to be the first to
hatch. On reaching the exterior the young Mantids do not fall to the
ground, but remain suspended, after the manner of spiders, to the
ootheca by means of two threads attached to the extremities of the
cerci; in this strange position they remain for some days until the first
change of skin is effected, after which they commence the activity of
their predatory life.

Fig. 138.—Egg-case of Mantis with young escaping: A, the case with

young in their position of suspension; B, cerci magnified, showing
the suspensory threads. (After Brongniart.)

Dr. Pagenstecher has given an account[173] of the development of

Mantis religiosa, from which it would appear that the statements of
Fischer and others as to the number of moults are erroneous, owing
to the earliest stages not having been observed. When the young
Mantis emerges from the egg it bears little resemblance to the future
Insect, but looks more like a tiny pupa; the front legs, that will
afterwards become so remarkable, are short and not different from
the others, and the head is in a curious mummy-like state, with the
mouth-parts undeveloped and is inflexed on the breast: there are, he
says, nine abdominal segments. The first ecdysis soon takes place
and the creature is thereafter recognisable as a young Mantis.
Pagenstecher's specimens at first would only eat Aphididae, but at a
later stage of the development they devoured other Insects greedily:
the number of ecdyses is seven or eight. The ocelli appear for the
first time when the wing rudiments do so; the number of joints in the
antennae increases at each moult. Dr. Pagenstecher considers that
this Insect undergoes its chief metamorphosis immediately after
leaving the egg, the earlier condition existing apparently to fit the
Insect for escaping from the egg-case. In the immature stage of the
Mantidae the alar organs appear (Fig. 139) as adjuncts of the sides
of the meso- and meta-notum, projecting backwards and very deeply
furrowed and ribbed in a wing-like manner. According to
Pagenstecher, this wing-like appearance only commences in the fifth
stadium, but he has not given particulars of the conditions of these
parts in the preceding instars. According to de Saussure[174] the
wings of the females of some species remain permanently in this
undeveloped or nymphal state.

Fig. 139.—Tegmina (t) and wings (w) of immature Mantis.

Fig. 140.—Iris oratoria, female. South Europe. Natural size.

The Mantidae, as a rule, have a quiet unobtrusive mien, and were it

not for their formidable front legs would look the picture of
innocence; they, however, hold these legs in such manner as to
greatly detract from the forbidding appearance thereof, stretching
them out only partially so as to give rise to an appearance of
supplication or prayer;[175] this effect is increased by their holding
themselves in a semi-erect position, standing on the hind and middle
legs with the upper parts of the body directed somewhat forwards,
hence they are called by various names indicating prayer or
supplication, and it is said that in some countries they are considered
sacred. Some of the older writers went so far as to say that a Mantis
would indicate the road a child should take by stretching out one of
its arms in the right direction. The traveller Burchell, speaking of a
species since described by Westwood under the name of
Tarachodes lucubrans, says: "I have become acquainted with a new
species of Mantis, whose presence became afterwards sufficiently
familiar to me by its never failing, on calm warm evenings, to pay me
a visit as I was writing my journal, and sometimes to interrupt my
lucubrations by putting out the lamp. All the Mantis tribe are very
remarkable Insects; and this one, whose dusky sober colouring well
suits the obscurity of night, is certainly so, by the very late hours it
keeps. It often settled on my book, or on the press where I was
writing, and remained still, as if considering some affair of
importance, with an appearance of intelligence which had a
wonderful effect in withholding my hand from doing it harm. Although
hundreds have flown within my power, I never took more than five. I
have given to this curious little creature the name of Mantis
lucubrans; and having no doubt that he will introduce himself to
every traveller who comes into this country [Southern Africa] in the
months of November and December, I beg to recommend him as a
harmless little companion, and entreat that kindness and mercy may
be shown to him." This appearance of innocence and quietness
must have struck all who have seen these Insects alive;
nevertheless, it is of the most deceptive character, for the creature's
activity consists of a series of wholesale massacres carried on day
after day, the number of victims it sacrifices being enormous. The
Mantis does not even spare its own kind; it is well known that the
female not unfrequently devours its own mate. A very different
picture to that of Burchell has been drawn by Potts, who observed
the habits of a species in New Zealand.[176] He informs us that when
about making an attack it approaches its intended prey with slow,
deliberate movements, its anterior limbs folded in an innocent