At a later date (1857) Schindler, in his “Magical Spirit-life,” expounded
a theory of mental polarity. The psychical life has two poles or
centres,—its day-pole, around which revolves our ordinary and superficial
current of ideas, and its night-pole, round which gathers the
sub-conscious and deeper group of beliefs and sentiments. Either life has
a memory, a consciousness, a world of its own: and they flourish to a
large extent inversely to each other. The day-world has for its organs of
receiving information the ordinary senses. But the magical or night-world
of the soul has its feelers also, which set men directly in telepathic
rapport with influences, however distant, exerted by the whole world: and
through this “inner sense” which serves to concentrate in itself all the
telluric forces (—a sense which in its various aspects we name instinct,
presentiment, conscience) is constructed the fabric of our sub-conscious
system. Through it man is a sort of résumé of all the cosmic life, in
secret affinity and sympathy with all natural processes; and by the will
which stands in response therewith he can exercise a directly creative
action on external nature. In normal and healthy conditions the two
currents of psychic life run on harmonious but independent. But in the
phenomena of somnambulism, clairvoyance, and delirium, the magic region
becomes preponderant, and comes into collision with the other. The
dark-world emerges into the realm of day as a portentous power: and there
is the feeling of a double personality, or of an indwelling genius,
familiar spirit, or demon.