In Lichtenberg’s joke, January and the months contrasted with it are characterized again by a modified relationship to a third factor: these are good wishes which one receives in the first month, but are not fulfilled during the other months. The differentiation from the manifold application of the same material which is really related to double meaning is here quite clear. A good example of unification-wit needing no explanation is the following: _J. B. Rousseau, the French poet, wrote an ode to posterity (à la postérité). Voltaire, thinking that the poor quality of the poem in no way justified its reaching posterity, wittily remarked, “This poem will not reach its destination”_ (K. Fischer). The last example may remind us of the fact that it is essentially unification which forms the basis of the so-called repartee in wit. For ready repartee consists in using the defense for aggression and in “turning the tables” or in “paying with the same coin.” That is, the repartee consists in establishing an unexpected identity between attack and counter-attack. For example, _a baker said to a tavern keeper, one of whose fingers was festering: “I guess your finger got into your beer.” The tavern keeper replied: “You are wrong. One of your rolls got under my finger nail”_ (Ueberhorst: _Das Komische_, II, 1900). While Serenissimus was traveling through his domains he noticed a man in the crowds who bore a striking resemblance to himself. He beckoned him to come over and asked: “_Was your mother ever employed in my home?_” “_No, sire_,” replied the man, “_but my father was._” While Duke Karl of Würtemberg was riding horseback he met a dyer working at his trade. “_Can you color my white horse blue?_” “_Yes, sire_,” was the rejoinder, “_if the animal can stand the boiling!_” In this excellent repartee, which answers a foolish question with a condition that is equally impossible, there occurs another technical factor which would have been omitted if the dyer’s reply had been: “No, sire, I am afraid that the horse could not stand being boiled.” Another peculiarly interesting technical means at the disposal of unification is the addition of the conjunction “and.” Such correlation signifies a connection which could not be understood otherwise. When Heine (_Harzreise_) says of the city of Göttingen, “_In general the inhabitants of Göttingen are divided into students, professors, Philistines, and cattle_,” we understand this combination exactly in the sense which he furthermore emphasized by adding: “These four social groups are distinguished little less than sharply.” Again, when he speaks about the school where he had to submit “_to so much Latin, drubbing, and geography_,” he wants to convey by this combination, which is made very conspicuous by placing the drubbing between the two studies, that the schoolboy’s conception unmistakably described by the drubbing should be extended also to Latin and geography.