Page:Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious.djvu/355

 itself, which likewise serves as a means of producing the comic. Our interest in this question will be enhanced when we recall that in the case of comparison the “feeling” as to whether something was to be classed as witty or merely comical often left us in the lurch (v. p. 114).

The subject really deserves more attention than we can bestow upon it. The main quality for which we ask in comparison is whether it is pertinent, that is, whether it really calls our attention to an existing agreement between two different objects. The original pleasure in refinding the same thing (Groos, p. 103) is not the only motive which favors the use of comparison. Besides this there is the fact that comparison is capable of a utilization which facilitates intellectual work; when for example, as is usually the case, one compares the less familiar to the more familiar, the abstract to the concrete, and explains through this comparison the more strange and the more difficult objects. With every such comparison, especially of the abstract to the concrete, there is a certain degradation and a certain economy in abstraction expenditure (in the sense of a conceptual mimicry) yet this naturally does not suffice to render prominent the character of the comic. The latter does not emerge