K. Fischer’s characterization of wit which seems to be most satisfactory 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 æsthetic freedom consists in the playful contemplation of objects” (p. 50). In another place (p. 20) the æsthetic 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 contrast to labor the æsthetic attitude is _playful_. “It may be that from æsthetic 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 condition 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 disguised 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 the 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_.”