At this place, however, we are inclined to feel that we should enter more deeply into the differentiation of the psychological situation between the cases of external and internal hindrance, as we have a faint notion that the removal of the inner hindrance might possibly result in a disproportionately higher contribution to pleasure. But I propose that we rest content here, that we be satisfied for the present with this one collection of evidence which adheres to what is essential to us. The only difference between the cases of outer and inner hindrances consists in the fact that here an already existing inhibition is removed, while there the formation of a new inhibition is avoided. We hardly resort to speculation when we assert that a “_psychic expenditure_” is required for the formation as well as for the retention of a psychic inhibition. Now if we find that in both cases the use of the tendency-wit produces pleasure, then it may be assumed _that such resultant pleasure corresponds to the economy of psychic expenditure_. Thus we are once more confronted with the principle of _economy_ which we noticed first in the study of the technique of word-wit. But whereas the economy we believed to have found at first was in the use of few or possibly the same words, we can here foresee an economy of psychic expenditure in general in a far more comprehensive sense, and we think it possible to come nearer to the nature of wit through a better determination of the as yet very obscure idea of “psychic expenditure.” A certain amount of haziness which we could not dissipate during the study of the pleasure mechanism in tendency-wit we accept as a slight punishment for attempting to elucidate more complicated problem before the simpler one, or the tendency-wit before the harmless wit. We observe that “_economy in the expenditure of inhibitions or suppressions_” seems to be the secret of the pleasurable effect of tendency-wit, and we now turn to the mechanism of the pleasure in harmless wit.