800 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
OBSERVATIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL 
PATHOLOGY. 
By the Rr. Rev. Dr. Dexany, Bishop of Laranda. 
[ Abstract. | 
Tuts paper deals with certain phenomena which have been 
observed to emerge into consciousness in states of high fever, 
but short of delirium. It would seem, too, that, as a 
necessary condition to their appearance, the fever must have 
been due to, or at all events accompanied by, acute inflam- 
mation of the right face under the eye and along the nose. 
Then, on closing the eyes, objects spontaneously appear, as 
if located just where the floor or wall. or other obstacle, 
would intercept the line of vision were the eyes open. 
These visual phenomena reveal a character which appears to 
distinguish them specifically from sights recalled by a con- 
scious effort of memory. They come without effort, whereas 
the attempt to recall the same objects when recognised is 
accompanied by effort, and followed by extreme lassitude. 
They seem steadily fixed, whereas those consciously recalled 
are unsteady; they are as distinct in detail as objects 
actually before the sense. Sights of conscious recollection, 
on the other hand, are vague and shadowy, but chiefly they 
appear actually present to hand, whereas the other class of 
phenomena always appear not present. The mind is con- 
scious of going out to them—of their being past, and having 
been elsewhere. The result of these and other comparisons 
appears to justify the conclusion that those abnormal spon- 
taneous phenomena are due to impressions made through 
the external senses, but unattended to, and so not at all 
perhaps affected by reflex consciousness. Their emergence 
later on would be due to purely physiological action, induced 
by high temperature. And the fact that they reveal a 
character specifically distinct from presentments of the same 
external objects, as an act of conscious recollection, seems 
to justify the inference that mentalisation accompanies and 
determines conscious impressions; and hence that know- 
ledge of external objects must postulate a factor—the 
mind—over and above the objects themselves, and the 
merely material organ of sense impression. The argument 
is not advanced as necessary to establish the action of mind, 
but as a concession to the lowest form of sensism. 
