What goes on here is an act, as it were, of digesting it, getting hold of it, and the phrase, “getting hold of the expression of this face” suggests that we are getting ho[o|l]d of a thing which is in the face and different from it. It seems we are looking for something, but we don't do so in the sense of looking for a model of the expression outside the face we see, but in the sense of sounding the thing with our attention. It is,

Ts-310,134

134.

when I let the face make an impression on me, as though there existed a double of its expression, as though the double was the prototype of the expression and as though seeing the expression of the face was finding the prototype to which it corresponded – – as though in our mind there had been a mould and the picture we see had fallen into that mould, fitting it. But it is rather that we let the picture sink into our mind and make a mould there.

(2015–) Wittgenstein Source Bergen Nachlass Edition (WS-BNE). Edited by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen under the direction of Alois Pichler. In: Wittgenstein Source, curated by Alois Pichler (2009–) and Joseph Wang-Kathrein (2020–). (N) Bergen: WAB.