‘On the palette, white is the lightest colour’

Since the remaining remarks of Part III, III.131–350, appear after III.1–130 in MS 173, they can be safely regarded as drafted after 12 April 1950, the date of composition of III.127–130. Less clear is how much later they were drafted, none being dated. It is unlikely that Wittgenstein set them down between 12 April and 24 April, the first date in MS 174, the next manuscript in the catalogue (p. 2r; Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology, volume 2, p. 81). It is beyond belief that Wittgenstein wrote 220 remarks in just 12 days, and it is likely he started MS 174 before he finished writing the remarks on colour in MS 173. (While manuscript numbers sometimes follow the order of composition, they do not guarantee it.) Far more reasonable is Anscombe's suggestion in her ‘Editor's Preface’ that Part III was written in Oxford in the spring of 1950. This is reasonable, especially for III.131–350. The remarks on ‘the inner and outer’ in MS 173 that occur between III.130 and III.131 have the appearance of as being written in relatively short order, and a spring date meshes with von Wright's report that colour was the main topic of conversation when Wittgenstein was staying at his home in April and early June (von Wright, ‘Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein to Georg Henrik von Wright’, p. 478).

Taking Wittgenstein to have begun writing on colour some days or weeks after writing on ‘the inner and outer’, the question arises of what prompted him to return to the topic and compose III.131–350. He may have broken off writing on colour after writing III.130 because it struck him that there is connection between people lacking normal colour vision, the subject of III.130, and people lacking normal feelings of joy, the subject of his first remark on psychological concepts (Last Writings, volume 2, p. 61). But what might have prompted him to change direction, return to writing on colour, and draft III.131ff? There is no hint of an answer in the text or surviving report or correspondence from the period. Nor is there any clue in the final remarks in volume 2 of Last Writings penned immediately before III.131 (pp. 61–71).