In 1913 Ludwig Wittgenstein told Bertrand Russell that he was planning to live by the fjords in a secluded part of Norway until he had solved the central questions in logic. Russell was aghast: “I said it would be dark, & he said he hated daylight. I said it would be lonely, & he said he prostituted his mind talking to intelligent people. I said he was mad, & he said God preserve him from sanity (God certainly will)”.
Wittgenstein was never guilty of false modesty and for a time convinced himself that the only philosophy book he published in his lifetime, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), had indeed settled the most important philosophical problems. But he was also troubled by the thought that he was never fully understood. Having completed the Tractatus, he decided to teach in remote villages in lower Austria. His sister Hermine protested that his genius was wasted on schoolchildren; it was like using a “precision instrument to open crates”. Wittgenstein replied: “You remind me of somebody who is looking out through a closed window and cannot explain to himself the strange movements of a passer-by. He cannot tell what sort of storm is raging out there or that this person might only be managing with difficulty to stay on his feet.”
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