in failure, according to its nature; and it seems likely that
herein will be found a true explanation of the effects believed
to be due to the power of the talisman.

On the other hand, however, we must beware of the exaggerations
into which certain schools of thought have fallen in their estimates
of the powers of the imagination. These exaggerations are
particularly marked in the views which are held by many nowadays
with regard to "faith-healing," although the "Christian Scientists"
get out of the difficulty--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).