fficulty--at least to their own satisfaction--by ascribing their
alleged cures to the Power of the Divine Mind, and not to the power of
the individual mind.

Of course the real question involved in this "transcendental theory
of talismans" as I may, perhaps, call it, is that of the operation of
incarnate spirit on the plane of matter. This operation takes place only
through the medium of the nervous system, and it has been suggested,(1)
to avoid any violation of the law of the conservation of energy, that
it is effected, not by the transference, as is sometimes supposed, of
energy from the spiritual to the material plane, but merely by means
of directive control over the expenditure of energy derived by the body
from purely physical sources, _e.g_. the latent chemical energy bound up
in the food eaten and the oxygen breathed.

(1) _Cf_ Sir OLIVER LODGE: _Life and Matter_ (1907), especially chap.
ix.; and W. HIBBERT, F.I.C.: _Life and Energy_ (1904).

I am not sure that this theory really avoids the difficulty which it is
intended to obviate;(1) but it is at least an interesting one, and
at any rate there may be modes in which the body, under the directive
control of the spirit, may expend energy derived from the material
plane, of which we know little or nothing. We have the testimony of many
eminent authorities(2) to the phenomenon of the movement of physical
objects without contact at spiritistic seances. It seems to me that the
introduction of discarnate intelligences to explain this phenomenon is
somewhat gratuitous--the psychic phenomena which yield evidence of the
survival of human personality after bodily death are of a different
character. For if we suppose this particular phenomenon to be due to
discarnate spirits, we must, in view of what has been said concerning
"mediums," conclude that the movements in question are not produced by
these spirits DIRECTLY, but through and by means of the nervous
system of the medium present. Evidently, therefore, the means for the
production of the phenomenon reside in the human nervous system (or, at
any rate, in the peculiar nervous system of "mediums"), and all that
is lacking is intelligence or initiative to use these means. This
intelligence or initiative can surely be as well supplied by the
sub-consciousness as by a discarnate intelligence. Consequently, it does
not seem unreasonable to suppose that equally remarkable phenomena may
have been produced by the aid of