the pretended
death case has come to a
point where he considers the
environment so fraught with
menace that nothing in the
environment has any intent save to kill him and that
death is immediate. He has insufficient
energy or
reason remaining even to appeal for
help and, indeed, he considers that there is no person or
object to which he can so appeal, and so he attempts to demonstrate to anything in the
environment that it has won and that he is already
dead.
(SOS, p. 172)