Part 38

Footnote 69:

The recollection of this innervation expenditure will remain the essential part of the idea of this motion, and there will always be methods of thought in my psychic life in which the idea will be represented by nothing else than this expenditure. In other connections a substitute for this element may possibly be put in the form of other ideas, for instance the visual idea of the object of the motion, or it may be put in the form of the word-idea; and in certain types of abstract thought a sign instead of the full content itself may suffice.

Footnote 70:

“What one has not in his head,” as the saying goes, “he must have in his legs.”

Footnote 71:

The problem has been greatly confused by the general conditions determining the comic, whereby the comic pleasure is seen to have its source now in a too-muchness and now in a not-enoughness.

Footnote 72:

Degradation: A. Bain (The Emotions and the Will, 2nd Ed., 1865) states: “The occasion of the ludicrous is the degradation of some person of interest possessing dignity, in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion” (p. 248).

Footnote 73:

“Thus every conscious and clever evocation of the comic is called wit, be it the comic of views or situations. Naturally we cannot use this view of wit here.” Lipps, l. c., p. 78.

Footnote 74:

At the most this is inserted by the dreamer as an explanation.

Footnote 75:

l. c., p. 294.

Footnote 76:

“Trente et quarante” is a gambling game.

Footnote 77:

Bergson, l. c., p. 29.

Footnote 78:

Sixth Ed., Berlin, 1891.

Footnote 79:

“You may well laugh, that no longer concerns you.”

Footnote 80:

That comic pleasure has its source in the “quantitative contrast,” in the comparison of big and small, which ultimately also expresses the essential relation of the child to the grown-up, would indeed be a peculiar coincidence if the comic had nothing else to do with the infantile.

Footnote 81:

“Our heads have the right to fall covered before thee.”

Footnote 82:

The excellent humoristic effect of a character like that of the fat knight, Sir John Falstaff, is based on economised contempt and indignation. To be sure we recognise in him the unworthy glutton and fashionably dressed swindler, but our condemnation is disarmed through a whole series of factors. We understand that he knows himself to be just as we estimate him; he impresses us through his wit; and besides that, his physical deformity produces a contact-effect in favor of a comic conception of his personality instead of a serious one; as if our demands for morality and honor must recoil from such a big stomach. His activities are altogether harmless and are almost excused by the comic lowness of those he deceives. We admit that the poor devil has a right to live and enjoy himself like any one else, and we almost pity him because in the principal situation we find him a puppet in the hands of one much his superior. It is for this reason that we cannot bear him any grudge and turn all we economize in him in indignation into comic pleasure which he otherwise provides. Sir John’s own humor really emanates from the superiority of an ego which neither his physical nor his moral defects can rob of its joviality and security.