Every statement about complexes can be analysed into a statement about their constituent parts, and into those propositions which completely describe the complexes.
2.021
Objects form the substance of the world. Therefore they cannot be compound.
2.0211
If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true.
2.0212
It would then be impossible to form a picture of the world (true or false).
2.022
It is clear that however different from the real one an imagined world may be, it must have something—a form—in common with the real world.
2.023
This fixed form consists of the objects.
2.0231
The substance of the world can only determine a form and not any material properties. For these are first presented by the propositions—first formed by the configuration of the objects.
2.0232
Roughly speaking: objects are colourless.
2.0233
Two objects of the same logical form are—apart from their external properties—only differentiated from one another in that they are different.
2.02331
Either a thing has properties which no other has, and then one can distinguish it straight away from the others by a description and refer to it; or, on the other hand, there are several things which have the totality of their properties in common, and then it is quite impossible to point to any one of them.
For if a thing is not distinguished by anything, I cannot distinguish it—for otherwise it would be distinguished.
2.024
Substance is what exists independently of what is the case.
2.025
It is form and content.
2.0251