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I

INTRODUCTION

WHOEVER has had occasion to examine that part of the literature of
aesthetics and psychology dealing with the nature and affinities of wit,
will, no doubt, concede that our philosophical inquiries have not awarded
to wit the important rôle that it plays in our mental life. One can recount
only a small number of thinkers who have penetrated at all deeply into
the problems of wit. To be sure, among the authors on wit, one finds the
illustrious names of the poet Jean Paul (Fr. Richter), and of the philoso-
phers Th. Vischer, Kuno Fischer and Th. Lipps. But even these writers
put the subject of wit in the background while their chief interest centers
around the more comprehensive and more alluring problems of the
comic.

In the main, this literature gives the impression that it is altogether im-
practical to study wit except when treated as a part of the comic.

PRESENTATION OF THE SUBJECT BY OTHER AUTHORS

According to Th. Lipps (Komik und Humor, 1898 ¹⁾) wit is “essentially
the subjective side of the comic; i.e., it is that part of the comic which
we ourselves create, which colors our conduct as such, and to which our
relation is that of Superior Subject, never of Object, certainly not Volun-
tary Object” (p. 80). The following comment might also be added: In
general, we designate as wit “every conscious and clever evocation of
the comic, whether the comic element lies in the viewpoint or in the situ-
ation itself” (p. 78).

K. Fischer explains the relation between wit and the comic by the aid
of caricature, which, according to the exposition, comes midway between
the two (Über den Witz, 1889). The subject of the comic is the hideous
element in any of its manifestations. “Where it is concealed it must be
disclosed in the light of the comic view; where it is not at all or but

¹⁾Beiträge zur Aesthetik, edited by Theodor Lipps and Richard Maria Werner.
VI,—a book to which I am indebted for the courage and capacity to undertake this
attempt.

634

slightly noticeable, it must be rendered conspicuous and elucidated in
such a manner that it becomes clear and intelligible. Thus arises carica-
ture” (p. 45). “Our entire psychic world, the intellectual realm of our
thoughts and conceptions, does not reveal itself to us on superficial con-
sideration. It cannot be visualized directly either figuratively or intui-
tively; moreover, it contains inhibitions, weak points, disfigurements, and
an abundance of ludicrous and comical contrasts. In order to bring it out
and to make it accessible to aesthetic examination, a force is necessary
which is capable not only of reflecting upon these conceptions and eluci-
dating them—namely, a force capable of clarifying thought. This force
is nothing but judgment. The judgment which produces the comic con-
trast is wit. In caricature, wit has played its part unnoticed, but only in
judgment does it attain its own individual form and the free domain of
its evolution.”

As can be seen, Lipps assigns the determining factor which classifies
wit as part of the comic, to the activity or to the active behavior of the
subject, whereas K. Fischer characterizes wit by its relation to its object,
in which characterization he accentuates the hidden hideous element in
the realm of thought. One cannot put to test the cogency of these defi-
-
nitions of wit; one can, in fact, hardly understand them unless one studies
the text from which they were taken. One is thus forced to work his way
through the author’s descriptions of the comic in order to learn anything
about wit. From other passages, however, one discovers that the same
authors attribute to wit essential characteristics of general validity in
which they disregard its relation to the comic.

K. Fischer’s characterization of wit which seems to be most satisfac-
tory to this author, runs as follows: “Wit is a playful judgment” (p. 51).
For an elucidation of this expression, we are referred to the analogy:
“How aesthetic freedom consists in the playful contemplation of ob-
jects” (p. 50). In another place (p. 20), the aesthetic attitude towards
an object is characterized by the condition that we expect nothing from
this object—especially no gratification of our serious needs—but that we
content ourselves with the pleasure of contemplating the same. In con-
trast to labor, the aesthetic attitude is playful. “It may be that from
aesthetic freedom there also results a kind of judgment, freed from the
conventional restrictions and rule of conduct, which, in view of its genesis,
I will call the playful judgment. This conception contains the first condi-
tion and possibly the entire formula for the solution of our problem.
‘Freedom begets wit and wit begets freedom,’ says Jean Paul. Wit is
nothing but a free play of ideas” (p. 24).

Since time immemorial, a favorite definition 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 dis-
 

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INTRODUCTION

guised 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 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 in
some way are contrasted with each other, usually through the medium of
speech association.” For a critic like Lipps, it would not be difficult to
reveal the utter inadequacy of this formula, but he himself does not ex-
clude the element of contrast—he merely assigns it elsewhere. “The con-
trast remains, but is not formed in a manner to show the ideas connected
with the words, rather it shows the contrast or contradiction in the mean-
ing and lack of meaning of the words” (p. 87). Examples show the better
understanding of the latter. “A contrast arises first through the fact that
we adjudge a meaning to its words which after all, we cannot ascribe to
them.”

In the further development of this last condition, the antithesis of
“sense in nonsense” becomes obvious. “What we accept one moment as
senseful, we later perceive as perfect nonsense. Thereby arises, in this
case, the operation of the comic element” (p. 85). “A saying appears
witty when we ascribe to it a meaning through psychological necessity
and, while doing so, retract it. It may thus have many meanings. We lend
a meaning to an expression, knowing that logically it does not belong to
it. We find in it a truth, however, which later we fail to find because it is
foreign to our laws of experience or usual modes of thinking. We endow it
with a logical or practical inference which transcends its true content,
only to contradict this inference as soon as we finally grasp the nature of
the expression itself. The psychological process evoked in us by the witty
expression which gives rise to the sense of the comic, depends in every
case on the immediate transition from the borrowed feeling of truth and
conviction to the impression or consciousness of relative nullity.”

As impressive as this exposition sounds, one cannot refrain from ques-
tioning whether the contrast between the senseful and senseless upon

536

which the comic depends, does not also contribute to the definition of
wit in so far as it is distinguished from the comic. Also the factor of “con-
fusion and clearness” leads one deeply into the problem of the relation of
wit to the comic. Kant, speaking of the comic element in general, states
that one of its remarkable attributes is the fact that it can delude us for a
moment only. Heymans (Zeitschr. f. Psychologie, XI, 1896) explains
how the mechanism of wit is produced through the succession of confu-
sion and clearness. He illustrates his meaning by an excellent witticism
from Heine, who causes one of his figures, the poor lottery agent, Hirsch-
Hyacinth, to boast that the great Baron Rothschild treated him as an
equal or quite Famillionaire. Here, the word which acts as the carrier
of the witticism appears in the first place simply as a faulty word-
formation, as something incomprehensible, inconceivable and enigmatic.
It is for these reasons that it is confusing. The comic element results from
the solution of the enigma and from the understanding of the word. Lipps
adds that the first stage of enlightenment, showing that the confusing
word means this or that, is followed by a second stage in which one per-
ceives that this nonsensical word has first deluded us and then given us
the true meaning. Only this second enlightenment, the realization that it
is all due to a word that is meaningless in ordinary usage—this reduction
to nothingness produces the comic effect (p. 95).

Whether or not either the one or the other of these two conceptions may
seem clearer, we are brought nearer to a definite insight through the
discussion of the processes of confusion and enlightenment. If the comic
effect of Heine’s Famillionaire depends upon the solution of the seemingly
senseless word, then the wit would have to be attributed to the formation
of this word and to the character of the word so formed.

In addition to the associations of the viewpoints just discussed, there
is another characteristic of wit which is recognized as peculiar to it by all
authors. “Brevity alone is the body and soul of wit,” declares Jean Paul
(Vorschule der Aesthetik, I, 45), and modifies it with a speech of the
old tongue-wagger, Polonius. from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act II, Scene
2):

“Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.”

Lipps’s description (p. 90) of the brevity of wit is also significant. He
states that wit says what it does say, not always in few, but always in too
few words; this is: “It expresses itself in words that will not stand the
test of strict logic or of the ordinary mode of thought and expression. In
fine, it can express itself by leaving the thing unsaid.”

That “wit must unearth something hidden and concealed”—to quote

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INTRODUCTION

K. Fischer (p. 51)—we have already been taught from the grouping
of wit with caricature. I re-
emphasize this determinant because it also
has more to do with the nature of wit than with its relation to the comic.

I am well aware that the foregoing scanty quotations from the works
of the authors on wit cannot do justice to the excellence of these works.
In view of the difficulties that confront one in reproducing clearly such
complicated and such delicately shaded streams of thought, I cannot
spare inquiring minds the trouble of searching for the desired information
in the original sources. However, I do not know whether they will return
fully satisfied. For the criteria and attributes of wit mentioned by these
authors, such as—activity, the relation of the content of wit to our
thoughts, the character of the playful judgment, the union of dissimi-
larities, contrasting ideas, “sense in nonsense,” the succession of confu-
sion and clearness, the sudden emergence of the hidden and the peculiar
brevity of wit—seems to us, at first glance, so very pertinent and so
easily demonstrable by examples that we cannot succumb to the danger
of underestimating the value of such ideas. But they are only disjointed
fragments which we should like to see welded into an organic whole. In
the end, they contribute no more to the knowledge of wit than a number
of anecdotes teach us of the true characteristics of a personality whose
biography interests us. We do not at all understand the connection that
is supposed to exist between the individual conditions; for instance, what
the brevity of wit may have to do with that side of wit exhibited in the
playful judgment; besides we do not know whether wit must satisfy all
or only some of these conditions in order to form real wit; which of them
may be replaced and which ones are indispensable. We should also like
a grouping and classification of wit in respect to its essential attributes.
The classification as given by the authors is based, on the one hand, on
the technical means, and on the other hand, on the utilization of wit in
speech (sound-wit, play on words, the wit of caricature, characterization
wit and witty repartee).

Accordingly, we should not find ourselves in a dilemma when it comes
to pointing out goals for a further effort to explain wit. In order to look
forward to success, we must either introduce new viewpoints into the
work, or try to penetrate further by concentrating our attention or by
broadening the scope of our interest. We can prescribe for ourselves the
task of at least not permitting any lack along the latter lines. To be sure,
it is rather remarkable how few examples of recognized witticisms suffice
the authors for their investigations and how each one accepts the ones
used by his predecessors. We need not shirk the responsibility of analyz-
ing the same examples which have already served the classical authors,
but we contemplate new material besides to lay a broader foundation for
our deductions. It is quite natural that we should select such examples of

38

wit as objects for our investigation as have produced the deepest impres-
sion upon our own lives and which have caused us the greatest amount
of laughter.

Some may inquire whether the subject of wit is worthy of such effort.
In my opinion, there is no doubt about it, for even if I disregard the per-
sonal motives to be revealed during the development of this theme (the
motives which drove me to gain an insight into the problem of wit), I can
refer to the fact that there is an intimate connection between all psychic
occurrences; a connection which promises to furnish a psychological in-
sight into a sphere which, although remote, will nevertheless be of consid-
erable value to the other spheres. One may also be reminded what a
peculiar, overwhelmingly fascinating charm wit offers in our society. A
new joke operates almost as an event of universal interest. It is passed
on from one person to another, just like the news of the latest conquest.
Even prominent men who consider it worth while relating how they at-
tained fame, what cities and countries they have seen, and with what cele-
brated persons they have consorted, do not disdain to dwell in their auto-
biographies upon this and that excellent joke which they have heard.¹

¹ J. V. Falke: Lebenserinnerungen, 1897.