Metaphysics and Magic: Echoes of the tractatus in Wittgenstein's 'Remarks on Frazer'

In this chapter I trace a number of thematic connections between Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Notebooks on the one hand, and his `Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough' on the other. Pointing to this continuity will, I hope, bring out how the dimension of significance, central to the `Remarks on Frazer', plays a role in the progress of the Tractatus, as well as elucidate how metaphysics is an expression and a distortion of the spiritual, similar to the one we find in magic and mythology. It would explain, as Wittgenstein puts it, ``metaphysics as a kind of magic''.