The subconscious is used in a rather loose way by popular and even by scientific writers. James regards it as "nowadays a well-accredited psychological entity,"[125] while Pratt refers to the use that is made of it as "rather questionable psychology."[126] Some of its possible and legitimate meanings are: (_a_) Those hereditary dispositions which, unknown to the man himself, largely shape his actions; or (_b_) the psychophysical machinery of habitualized action. As Jastrow says: "We rise upon steps of our habitualized selves, grown familiar to their task."[127] The subconscious again (_c_) may mean that subliminal activity of the mind which, when the conscious strain of effort and attention has been unsuccessful, often, as it seems, does the work for one, recalling the forgotten name, solving the problem, or even creating a new product such as a finished song or poem. 125: "Varieties," p. 511. 126: _Hibbert Journal_, October, 1911, p. 231. 127: "The Subconscious," p. 433. Lastly (_d_) the subconscious may refer to that more occult sphere to which belong the phenomena of hypnotism, automatism, multiple personality, and perhaps telepathy, in virtue of which the subject performs actions or has ideas to which his ordinary consciousness gives no clew. The subconscious in any or all of these senses is at least the dwelling place of mystery. Starbuck admits that "what happens below the threshold of consciousness must, in the nature of the case, evade analysis."[128] It is a mysterious region of shadows, a twilight zone in which the divine and human may meet. It may be in itself the source of the religious life, or at least the channel through which revelation and redemptive influence may come. 128: "Psychology of Religion," p. 107. In James' exposition the subconscious part of a man is the higher part; and man is conscious that this higher part of himself "is co-terminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him."[129] What is this more? Our point of contact with it is the subconscious self; and without asking for the farther limits of the "More," and "disregarding the over-beliefs," "we have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come, a positive content of religious experience, which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes."[130] 129: "Varieties," p. 508. 130: _Ibid._, p. 515.