Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/23

Rh of wit has been the ability to discover similarities in dissimilarities, i.e., to find hidden similarities. Jean Paul has jocosely expressed this idea by saying that “wit is the disguised priest who unites every couple.” Th. Vischer adds the postscript: “He likes best to unite those couples whose marriage the relatives refuse to sanction.” Vischer refutes this, however, by remarking that in some witticisms there is no question of comparison or the discovery of similarities. Hence with very little deviation from Jean Paul’s definition he defines wit as the skill to combine with surprising quickness many ideas, which through inner content and connections are foreign to one another. K. Fischer then calls attention to the fact that in a large number of these witty judgments one does not find similarities, but contrasts; and Lipps further remarks that these definitions refer to the wit that the humorist possesses and not to the wit that he produces. Other viewpoints, in some measure connected with one another, which have been mentioned in defining and describing wit are: “the contrast of ideas” “sense in nonsense” and “confusion and clearness.” Definitions like those of Kraepelin lay stress upon the contrast of ideas. Wit is “the voluntary combination or linking of two ideas which