 By “Linguistic atomism” we shall understand the view that the analysis of every proposition terminates in a proposition all of whose genuine components are names. It is a striking fact that the Tractatus contains no explicit argument for linguistic atomism. This fact has led some commentators — e.g., Peter Simons (1992) — to suppose that Wittgenstein’s position here is motivated less by argument than by brute intuition. And indeed, Wittgenstein does present some conclusions in this vicinity as if they required no argument. At 4.221, for example, he says: “It is obvious that in the analysis of propositions we must come to elementary propositions, which consist of names in immediate combination” (emphasis added). Nonetheless, some basic observations about the Tractatus’s conception of analysis will enable us to see why Wittgenstein should have thought it obvious that analysis must terminate in this way. 