Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/133

 condition of the witticism and not the two comparisons themselves. This would then be a case of Identical Wit Technique as in the example of the torch.

The following comparison seems witty on other but similarly classifiable grounds: “I look upon reviews as a kind of children’s disease which more or less attacks new-born books. There are cases on record where the healthiest died of it, and the puniest have often lived through it. Many do not get it at all. Attempts have frequently been made to prevent the disease by means of amulets of prefaces and dedications, or to color them up by personal pronunciamentos; but it does not always help.”

The comparison of reviews with children’s diseases is based in the first place upon their susceptibility to attack shortly after they have seen the light of the world. Whether this makes it witty I do not trust myself to decide. But when the comparison is continued, it is found that the later fates of the new books may be represented within the scope of the same or by means of similar comparisons. Such a continuation of a comparison is undoubtedly witty, but we know already to what technique it owes its witty flavor; it is a case of unification or the establishment of an unexpected association. The character of the unification, however, is not changed