Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/120

 we shall discuss only the most pronounced variations, and shall give only a few examples.

The association used in the substitution may be a mere sound, so that this sub-group may be analogous to word-wit in the pun. However, it is not similarity in sound of two words, but of whole sentences, characteristic combinations of words, and similar means.

For example, Lichtenberg coined the saying: “New baths heal well,” which immediately reminds one of the proverb, “New brooms clean well,” whose first and last words, as well as whose whole sentence structure, is the same as in the first saying. It has undoubtedly arisen in the witty thinker’s mind as an imitation of the familiar proverb. Thus Lichtenberg’s saying is an allusion to the latter. By means of this allusion something is suggested that cannot be frankly said, namely, that the efficacy of the baths taken as cures is due to other things beside the thermal springs whose attributes are the same everywhere.

The solution of the technique of another one of Lichtenberg’s jokes is similar: “The girl barely twelve modes old.” That sounds something like the chronological term “twelve moons” (i.e., months), and may originally have been a mistake in writing in the permissible poetical expression. But there is a good deal of