In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in an atomic fact the possibility of that atomic fact must already be prejudged in the thing.
It would, so to speak, appear as an accident, when to a thing that could exist alone on its own account, subsequently a state of affairs could be made to fit.
If things can occur in atomic facts, this possibility must already lie in them.
(A logical entity cannot be merely possible. Logic treats of every possibility, and all possibilities are its facts.)
Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space, or temporal objects apart from time, so we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connection with other things.
If I can think of an object in the context of an atomic fact, I cannot think of it apart from the possibility of this context.
The thing is independent, in so far as it can occur in all possible circumstances, but this form of independence is a form of connection with the atomic fact, a form of dependence. (It is impossible for words to occur in two different ways, alone and in the proposition.)
If I know an object, then I also know all the possibilities of its occurrence in atomic facts.
(Every such possibility must lie in the nature of the object.)
A new possibility cannot subsequently be found.
In order to know an object, I must know not its external but all its internal qualities.
If all objects are given, then thereby are all possible atomic facts also given.