wife is like an umbrella, at worst one may always take a cab.”
We have already elucidated the complicated technique of this example; it is a puzzling and seemingly impossible comparison which however, as we now see, is not in itself witty; it shows besides an allusion (cab=public conveyance), and as the strongest technical means it also shows an omission which serves to make it still more unintelligible. The comparison may be worked out in the following manner. A man marries in order to guard himself against the temptations of sensuality, but it then turns out that after all marriage affords no gratification for one of stronger needs, just as one takes along an umbrella for protection against rain only to get wet in spite of it. In both cases one must search for better protection; in one case one must take a public cab, in the other women procurable for money. Now the wit has almost entirely been replaced by cynicism. That marriage is not the organization which can satisfy a man’s sexuality, one does not dare to say loudly and frankly unless indeed it be one like Christian v. Ehrenfels,[1] who is forced to it by the love of truth and the zeal of reform. The strength of this witticism lies
- ↑ See his essays in the Politisch-anthropologischen Revue, II, 1903.
