ture of these fluidic hands?
To whom do they belong? Of what are they constituted? Are they
the hands of a spirit, or mere exteriorizations from the body of the
medium--materializations, only partially independent?

Without attempting to answer these questions in this place, I will
conclude by pointing out two facts, which seem to me of considerable
importance. The first is that many nervous and mentally abnormal
patients may be mediums were the pains taken to ascertain that fact. I
know of one famous alienist who confided to me his belief that a very
large percentage of mediumistic cases could be found in hospitals for
hysterical patients or in wards for the mentally unbalanced. The trouble
is that experiments tending to ascertain the truth of such a theory are
never tried. Had not Dr. Ochorowicz been interested in things psychic,
Mlle. Tomczyk would simply have been cured by him in the general routine
manner and dismissed. The world would thus have been deprived of one of
the most remarkable mediums on record!

In the second place, these fluidic hands are almost identical in many
ways with those presented by Eusapia Palladino at her best. The
materialized hands, of varying degrees of density and formation,
attached to long, shadowy arms, are exactly like the hands so often
materialized at her seances--hands which are at times small, and at
other times enormous. They no more resembled the hands of the medium
than chalk resembles cheese.

16. This brings me to a final reflection, which I should like to mention
before leaving this branch of our discussion. It concerns the question
of darkness and its effect upon genuine mediumistic phenomena. Whether
this effect be primarily physical, physiological, or psychological, the
_fact_ remains that it exists; and the researches of Dr. Ochorowicz have
tended to confirm this very strongly. His work has shown us (or rather
confirmed us more strongly in the belief) that the question of _light_
is a highly important one, and that the greater the degree of darkness,
_ceteris paribus_, the better and the more startling the phenomena.

Now, there has always existed a sort of _a priori_ assumption that this
should be so. Light, as we know, does bring about chemical reactions,
and even exerts a definite physical force or pressure. Even so gross and
so powerful a form of physical energy as wireless telegraphy is greatly
interfered with by reason of the sun's rays (ultra-violet rays), an