nd the pale of doubt. But even if this be
not granted, I can quite see how a certain _rapport_ between the sitter
and the hand--or the intelligence behind the hand--might easily enable
one sitter to perceive it, and not another. Analogies from trance
phenomena and even from experimental thought-transference might be drawn
here, in favour of such a theory. The whole theory of apparitions at the
moment of death depends upon this established _rapport_, since, if it
did not exist, and affect the results, the apparition might just as well
appear to Tom, Dick, and Harry as to the percipient--and the percipient
is such (supposedly) simply by reason of this pre-established _rapport_.

There might be, then, a certain _rapport_ between some sitters and a
plane of activity upon which such hands manifest, enabling these
individuals to see the hands, while prohibiting others from seeing them.
The receptivity or capacity might indicate a greater or lesser degree of
psychic capacity--they would be "more mediumistic." That is, the more
mediumistic the sitter, the more likely would he be to perceive such
hands. And of course we all know in this connection that mediums or
psychics in a circle will perceive hands and faces and other forms quite
invisible to the ordinary observer. The usual recourse in such cases is
to assume that the mediums are fraudulently in league with one another;
but when unprofessional psychics experience the same sensations (or
perceptions) there is good ground for calling a halt, and asking whether
or not the sensations were not possibly genuine in the case of the
professional medium also.

In other words, and to summarize this part of the discussion, I can only
say that there seems to me no valid reason for thinking that the
spirit-hands in Home's seances were probably hallucinatory in character
because only some of the sitters saw them. They might just as well be
explained by supposing that certain of the sitters were more psychic or
mediumistic than the others, and these saw--clairvoyantly or by some
similar mode of psychic perception--hands and forms invisible to those
less sensitive. It need hardly be said that the carrying about of
objects by these hands renders their objective nature and existence far
more probable than if such movements had never taken place. These
physical phenomena remain, no matter what view we take of the visible
(or invisible) hands.

In speaking next of Home's "full-form phantasms