"In a spontaneous somnambulistic state?"
"Yes."
"For what purpose?"
"She was hunting matches; for she was frightened in her sleep, and didn't want to sleep without light."
Sure enough, there were always matches in the drawer opened by Eusapia, except on this particular night. She therefore returned without getting any.
While listening to the explanation of the table, Eusapia shrugged her shoulders, but protested no longer.
Here, then, is a woman who, from time to time, has the power of passing from one psychical state to another. Is it just to accuse such a creature of premeditated fraud, without the slightest medical and psychological examination, without the least attempt at verification?...
M. Ochorowicz adds here that, so far as he is concerned, the phenomena are not produced by a personality different from that of the medium, nor by a new independent occult force; but it is a special psychic condition which permits the vital dynamism of the medium (the astral body of the occultists) to act at a distance, under certain exceptional conditions. It is the only hypothesis which seems necessary in the actual state of our knowledge.
Why does the medium so often try to release her hand? So far as the Cambridge experimenters are concerned, the cause is very simple and always the same: she releases her hand in order to indulge in tricks. As a matter of fact, the reasons why she frees her hand are many and complicated.
Dr. Ochorowicz's explanations are as follows: