We recall also the observation made during the investigation of wit-technique, namely, that absurdity in wit frequently stands for derision and criticism in the thought behind the witticism, wherein the wit-work follows the dream-work. This state of affairs, we find, is here once more confirmed. That the derision and criticism are not aimed at the agent, who appears in the former examples only as the whipping boy of the joke, is shown by another series in which the agent, on the contrary, is pictured as a superior person whose dialectics are a match for any difficulty. They are stories whose façades are logical instead of comical—they are sophistic thought-witticisms. In one of them (p. 83) the agent knows how to circumvent the limping of the bride by stating that in her case it is at least “a finished job”; another woman with straight limbs would be in constant danger of falling and breaking a leg, which would be followed by sickness, pains, and doctor’s fees—all of which can be avoided by marrying the one already limping. Again in another example (p. 81) the agent is clever enough to refute by good arguments each of the whole series of the suitor’s objections against the bride; only to the last, which cannot be glossed over, he rejoins, “Do you expect her to have no blemishes at all?” as if the other objections had not left behind an important remnant. It is not difficult to pick out the weak points of the arguments in both examples, a thing which we have done during the investigation of the technique. But now something else interests us. If the agent’s speech is endowed with such a strong semblance of logic, which on more careful examination proves to be merely a semblance, then the truth must be lurking in the fact that the witticism adjudges the agent to be right. The thought does not dare to admit that he is right in all seriousness, and replaces it by the semblance which the wit brings forth; but here, as it often happens, the jest betrays the seriousness of it. We shall not err if we assume that all stories with logical façades really mean what they assert even if these assertions are deliberately falsely motivated. Only this use of sophism for the veiled presentation of the truth endows it with the character of wit, which is mainly dependent upon tendency. What these two stories wish to indicate is that the suitor really makes himself ridiculous when he collects together so sedulously the individual charms of the bride which are transient after all, and when he forgets at the same time that he must be prepared to take as his wife a human being with inevitable faults; whereas, the only virtue which might make tolerable marriage with the more or less imperfect personality of the woman,—mutual attachment and willingness for affectionate adaptation,—is not once mentioned in the whole affair.