Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/323

 attribute of the idea actually coincides with an attribute of the object conceived, although psychology warns us of confusions of this sort.

I obtain an idea of a definite coarse movement by performing this motion or by imitating it, and in so doing I set a standard for this motion in my feelings of innervation.

Now if I perceive a similar more or less coarse motion in some one else, the surest way to the understanding—to apperception—of the same is to carry it out imitatively and the comparison will then enable me to decide in which motion I expended more energy. Such an impulse to imitate certainly arises on perceiving a movement. But in reality I do not carry out the imitation any more than I still spell out words simply because I have learnt to read by means of spelling. Instead of imitating the movement by my muscles I substitute the idea of the same through my memory traces of the expenditures necessary for similar motions. Perceiving, or “thinking,” differs above all from