As the etymology of the word suggests, wit is not so much a special faculty concerned with a particular class of relations, as an attitude or manner of behaviour of the {355} intelligence as a whole. It illustrates her most lively and agile gait, and is characterised by readiness of mind, quickness of perception, ingenuity in following out hints of quite unexpected contrasts, similarities, aims, causes, reasons, and the other apparent belongings of an idea. As tending to sportiveness, it loves an intellectual chase for its own sake, and revels in sudden transitions, doublings, and the whole game of verbal hide and seek.[297] According to this view, wit is a talent which has been especially developed by a proper exercise of one of the chief functions of the social animal, conversation. This has its light and entertaining variety, talk, which when it reaches the perfection of an art becomes a kind of game. A subject is tossed out like a ball and each side then tries to strike it in turn and so keep the game going. Something of serious purpose may be behind, as a half wish to illumine the subject, but the main interest lies in the game itself, in the exhilarating pleasure of crossing the intellectual foils with a worthy opponent. Yet, though a game, talk is commonly carried on by persons who are not merely fellow-players. As we have seen, witty dialogue flourishes when some force of repulsion as well as of attraction is involved, as that between a would-be seller and his needy yet stand-off buyer, or between a wooer and a woman concerned not to make winning too easy. Where, as between two rivals, the situation is conducive to warmth, the wit will be apt to grow pungent. As Addison reminds us, wit is often developed in an unequal game, between a “butt” and his assailants, the butt knowing now and again, like Sir John Falstaff, how “to get the laugh of his side”.[298] The art of witty exchange, like that of using foils, clearly implies self-restraint; and in both cases the desirable {356} coolness is greatly furthered by the presence of the impartial spectator. It is possible that husband and wife first learned to spar jocosely by having to carry on disputes in the presence of outside hearers. Taking this view of wit, we may see how word-play inevitably comes into it. The pun of childish years, which merely tricks the ear by an accidental doubleness of meaning, need not be considered here. It is only when the ambiguity has value for laughter, when it can be turned to some merry purpose, that it comes under the eye of art. Word-play clearly tends to run into thought-play. Some of the best-known “mots” will be found to involve the double-sense of the pun, like the praise awarded by the witty King to one of his courtiers in the remark that he was never in the way and never out of the way. It is the deep sense discernible through the verbal appearance of a self-contradiction which charms and entertains here.[299]