Have you not noticed that the more you try to remember the name of a person which you have forgotten, the more it eludes you, until, substituting in your mind the idea "I shall remember in a minute" to the idea "I have forgotten", the name comes back to you of its own accord without the least effort? Let those of you who are cyclists remember the days when you were learning to ride. You went along clutching the handle bars and frightened of falling. Suddenly catching sight of the smallest obstacle in the road you tried to avoid it, and the more efforts you made to do so, the more surely you rushed upon it. Who has not suffered from an attack of uncontrollable laughter, which bursts out more violently the more one tries to control it? What was the state of mind of each person in these different circumstances? "_I do not want_ to fall but I _cannot help_ doing so"; "I _want_ to sleep but I _cannot_ "; "I _want_ to remember the name of Mrs. So and So, but I _cannot_ "; "I _want_ to avoid the obstacle, but I _cannot_ "; "I _want_ to stop laughing, but I _cannot_." As you see, in each of these conflicts it is always the _imagination_ which gains the victory over the _will_, without any exception. To the same order of ideas belongs the case of the leader who rushes forward at the head of his troops and always carries them along with him, while the cry "Each man for himself!" is almost certain to cause a defeat. Why is this? It is because in the first case the men _imagine_ that they must go _forward_, and in the second they _imagine_ that they are conquered and must fly for their lives. Panurge was quite aware of the contagion of example, that is to say the action of the imagination, when, to avenge himself upon a merchant on board the same boat, he bought his biggest sheep and threw it into the sea, certain beforehand that the entire flock would follow, which indeed happened. We human beings have a certain resemblance to sheep, and involuntarily, we are irresistibly impelled to follow other people's examples, _imagining_ that we cannot do otherwise. I could quote a thousand other examples but I should fear to bore you by such an enumeration. I cannot however pass by in silence this fact which shows the enormous power of the imagination, or in other words of the unconscious in its struggle against the _will_. There are certain drunkards who wish to give up drinking, but who cannot do so. Ask them, and they will reply in all sincerity that they desire to be sober, that drink disgusts them, but that they are irresistibly impelled to drink against their _will_, in spite of the harm they know it will do them. In the same way certain criminals commit crimes _in spite of themselves_, and when they are asked why they acted so, they answer "I could not help it, something impelled me, it was stronger than I."