The process, then, which has carried the thought into the witticism can be represented in the following manner, which, although at first rather fantastic, nevertheless furnishes exactly the actual existing result: “Rothschild treated me quite familiarly, i.e., as well as a millionaire can do that sort of thing.” Now imagine that a compressing force is acting upon these sentences and assume that for some reason or other the second sentence is of lesser resistance. It is accordingly forced toward the vanishing point, but its important component, the word “millionaire,” which strives against the compressing power, is pushed, as it were, into the first sentence and becomes fused with the very similar element, the word “familiar” of this sentence. It is just this possibility, provided by chance to save the essential part of the second sentence, which favors the disappearance of the other less important components. The jest then takes shape in this manner: “Rothschild treated me in a very famillionaire way.” / (mili) (aire) Apart from such a compressing force, which is really unknown to us, we may describe the origin of the wit-formation, that is, the technique of the wit in this case, as a _condensation with substitutive formation_. In our example the substitutive formation consists in the formation of a mixed word. This fused word “famillionaire,” incomprehensible in itself but instantly understood in its context and recognized as senseful, is now the carrier of the mirth-provoking stimulus of the jest, whose mechanism, to be sure, is in no way clearer to us through the discovery of the technique. To what extent can a linguistic process of condensation with substitutive formation produce pleasure through a fused word and force us to laugh? We make note of the fact that this is a different problem, the treatment of which we can postpone until we shall find access to it later. For the present we shall continue to busy ourselves with the technique of wit. Our expectation that the technique of wit cannot be considered an indifferent factor in the examination of the nature of wit prompts us to inquire next whether there are other examples of wit formed like Heine’s “famillionaire.” Not many of these exist, but enough to constitute a small group which may be characterized as the blend-word formations or fusions. Heine himself has produced a second witticism from the word “millionaire” by copying himself, as it were, when he speaks of a “millionarr” (_Ideen_, Chap. XIV). This is a visible condensation of “millionaire” and “narr” (fool) and, like the first example, expresses a suppressed by-thought. Other examples of a similar nature are as follows.