No mechanisms have hitherto been conclusively demonstrated to be responsible for initiating optically-luminous nuclear (Seyfert) activity in local disk galaxies. Only a small minority of such galaxies are visibly disturbed in optical starlight, with the observed disturbances being at best marginally stronger than those found in matched samples of inactive galaxies. Here, we report the first systematic study of an optically-selected sample of twenty-three active galaxies in atomic hydrogen (HI) gas, which is the most sensitive and enduring tracer known of tidal interactions. Eighteen of these galaxies are (generally) classified as Seyferts, with over half (and perhaps all) having [OIII] luminosities within two orders of magnitude of Quasi-Stellar Objects. Only ~28% of these Seyfert galaxies are visibly disturbed in optical DSS2 images. By contrast, ~94% of the same galaxies are disturbed in HI, in nearly all cases not just spatially but also kinematically on galactic (>~20 kpc) scales. In at least ~67% and perhaps up to ~94% of cases, the observed HI disturbances can be traced to tidal interactions with neighboring galaxies detected also in HI. The majority of these neighboring galaxies have projected separations of

64 pages, 44 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ. Changes: Nothing is changed except that the paper was compiled differently to reduce the number of pages. To be friendly to the Earth forest, you could also choose to only print the text part of the paper and view images on line. (see http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~ck2v/paper/)