Florence Scovel Shinn: Core Teachings, Key Ideas and Practices

Florence Scovel Shinn was an American illustrator who became a New Thought teacher in 1920s New York. Her books, her spoken-word method, a practice to try, and the criticism it attracts.

Who was Florence Scovel Shinn, and what did she do before she taught?

Florence Scovel Shinn was an American illustrator who became a New Thought writer and lecturer in New York, born in Camden, New Jersey in 1871 and dying in New York City in 1940 at sixty-nine. She trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where she met the painter Everett Shinn, later a member of the group of American realists known as The Eight and associated with the Ashcan School. They married in 1898 and the marriage ended in divorce. For roughly two decades Florence Scovel Shinn earned her living drawing, mostly illustrations for children's books and for fiction in periodicals. That commercial background shows in her prose, which is short, concrete and free of the German-idealist vocabulary weighing down much nineteenth-century metaphysical writing. By the 1920s she was teaching: lecturing in New York, seeing students individually, putting her method into print. The Game of Life and How to Play It appeared in 1925, and the account usually given is that she paid for the printing herself after publishers turned the manuscript down. Three more books followed, one assembled after her death. She held no theological training or clerical office, and founded no church, institute or certification program.

The biographical record on Florence Scovel Shinn is thin next to the record on her better-documented contemporaries, and much of what circulates online is embellishment. The solid details come from art-world sources, where she appears as Everett Shinn's first wife and as a working illustrator, and from the books themselves. Her writing is autobiographical in one respect only: the case histories come from her own practice, and she never names anyone involved. A woman came to me is her standard opening, which makes the anecdotes unverifiable by design rather than by oversight. She taught during a boom in American metaphysical religion, when Unity and Religious Science were growing quickly and New York supported a real audience for midday metaphysical talks. Her books were slim and cheap, which mattered to their spread; most editions of The Game of Life and How to Play It run well under a hundred pages.

Was Florence Scovel Shinn related to the painter Everett Shinn?

Florence Scovel Shinn was married to Everett Shinn, not related to him by blood. She was born Florence Scovel and took his surname on marrying him in 1898. Everett Shinn became known as a painter of theaters and street life, part of the realist circle that exhibited as The Eight. The marriage ended in divorce and she kept the name on all her books.

Did Florence Scovel Shinn have formal religious or medical training?

Florence Scovel Shinn had no formal religious or medical training. Her documented education was in art, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She was not ordained, held no divinity degree and directed no organization. This matters when reading the passages describing physical healings, because they are the observations of a lecturer describing her students, not clinical reports.

What does The Game of Life and How to Play It actually teach?

The Game of Life and How to Play It teaches that life runs on rules a person can learn and use, and that the rules concern what that person pictures, expects and says out loud. Florence Scovel Shinn opens by reframing the subject: most people consider life a battle, she writes, but it is not a battle, it is a game. From there she treats mental images and spoken words as causes and outward conditions as their effects, summarized in her most quoted line, that the game of life is a game of boomerangs and that thoughts, deeds and words return to the sender with astounding accuracy. Several working ideas sit around that core. Each person has what she calls a divine design, a particular right place, right work and right supply, and wanting something outside that design produces trouble even when the thing is obtained. Fear functions as the single opponent, because fear is a vivid picture of the unwanted outcome and therefore a request for it. Forgiveness is presented mechanically: resentment held toward a person blocks the holder's own supply, so releasing it is self-interested rather than saintly.

The structure of The Game of Life and How to Play It is a chapter per law, each ending in a printed affirmation the reader is meant to use. Prosperity, non-resistance, karma and forgiveness, casting the burden, love and intuition each get a turn. What makes the book unusual for its period is how operational it is. Florence Scovel Shinn spends little time arguing for her premises and almost all of it demonstrating procedure, which is why the text still reads as a manual rather than a treatise. Her vocabulary is thoroughly Christian. She quotes scripture on nearly every page and reads it as coded instruction about mental law rather than as history, so the Israelites crossing the Red Sea becomes a lesson about proceeding when the way looks closed. The case histories are the other distinguishing feature: brief, domestic and specific, involving rent, jobs, a house sale, a broken engagement.

What is the divine design in The Game of Life and How to Play It?

The divine design in The Game of Life and How to Play It is Florence Scovel Shinn's term for the pattern she believed each person is born with, covering the work, place and supply that genuinely belong to them. Her practical use of it was a limiting clause: rather than demanding a named house or a named partner, a student asked for the right one under the design, so nothing wrong for them could be forced through.

Is The Game of Life and How to Play It a Christian book?

The Game of Life and How to Play It uses Christian language throughout but sits outside orthodox Christian teaching. Florence Scovel Shinn quotes the Bible constantly and calls Jesus Christ the greatest teacher of the law she describes. Mainstream Christian critics object that she reads scripture as a technique manual for getting outcomes and treats faith as a mechanism rather than a relationship, which is why her books are shelved under metaphysics.

How do Scovel Shinn affirmations work, and what did your word is your wand mean?

Scovel Shinn affirmations are short declarative sentences, spoken aloud in the first person and present tense, that name a specific outcome while leaving the route to it open. Your word is your wand, the title of her 1928 book, is Florence Scovel Shinn's compressed reason for the method: ordinary speech is the operating instrument of the mind, so a sentence said in irritation carries the same force as one said in a practice session. The open-route part is handled by a qualifying clause. Her statements repeatedly attach phrases about what belongs to a person by divine right, or ask that something come under grace and in a perfect way, and those clauses stop the speaker locking onto one house or one job. Many affirmations come in two halves, following the older New Thought pattern of denial and affirmation: the speaker refuses the appearance being faced, then states the condition being claimed. The sentence is repeated until it stops meeting internal argument, which she described as the point where it registers in the subconscious. She then required an outward act consistent with the claim, small and concrete, which most modern summaries drop.

Florence Scovel Shinn's model of mind is the standard three-level one of her period, and knowing it makes the affirmations legible. There is the conscious mind, which reasons and observes; the subconscious, which she treats as a faithful recorder with no judgment, carrying out whatever it is convincingly given; and the superconscious, identified with divine mind. The affirmation aims squarely at the middle level, which is why she cared about conviction rather than volume. A statement said flatly while the speaker silently disagrees is, in her account, not accepted at all, and she was candid that students often found a particular affirmation impossible to say without flinching. Her response was to shorten it or change the wording until it could be said without inner protest, then build back up. That instinct works whether or not you accept the metaphysics, because saying a claim aloud exposes the disbelief and gives you something specific to address.

Do Scovel Shinn affirmations have to be spoken out loud?

Florence Scovel Shinn consistently instructed that affirmations be spoken aloud, and her posthumous collection was titled around the spoken word for that reason. She allowed silent statements when circumstances required, but treated audible speech as stronger because it demands attention and exposes disbelief. In practice, saying the sentence quietly but audibly is closer to her instruction than reading it silently from a page.

Why do Scovel Shinn affirmations include phrases like by divine right?

Phrases such as by divine right keep a request from being pinned to one specific object or person. Florence Scovel Shinn held that each person has a right place, right work and right supply, and that demanding something outside that pattern brings trouble even when it arrives. The clause acts as a safety catch: it asks for the thing if it belongs to the speaker, and quietly declines it if not.

How can you practice Florence Scovel Shinn's method for one week?

A workable one-week trial of Florence Scovel Shinn's method takes about ten minutes a day and follows her own sequence: catch the speech, write the statement, say it aloud, then act on it. Start by picking one situation, not several. It should be concrete and current, such as an unresolved bill, a stalled job search or a conversation you are avoiding. On day one, do nothing but listen to yourself. Note every sentence you say aloud about that situation, jokes included. Most people find between five and fifteen. On day two, write your affirmation: one sentence, present tense, first person, naming what you want, with a clause that leaves the route open, such as under grace and in a perfect way. If the sentence makes you wince, it is too big, so cut it down until you can say it without flinching. On day three, add the denial half if you need it, a short refusal of the appearance spoken before the affirmation. From day four, say the pair aloud morning and evening, and each time you catch one of the old sentences from day one, stop and say the affirmation instead. On day six, take the action.

The action step is where Florence Scovel Shinn differs from a generic affirmation routine, and it deserves specifying. She asked for an outward move that a person who already had the result would make, sized small enough to be honest. If the claim concerns work, the action might be updating the portfolio you have been putting off. If it concerns money owed to you, it might be sending the invoice reminder rather than rehearsing the argument. The move should cost something in effort or nerve without being reckless. She reported students spending money they did not have as an act of faith, and that pattern is where her material can do real damage; treat the action step as behavioral commitment, not financial risk. On day seven, review. Write down what actually changed, separating changes in circumstance from changes in your own behavior. That separation is the honest way to evaluate the week, because the behavioral changes are reliably attributable and the circumstantial ones usually are not.

What is a good first affirmation in the Florence Scovel Shinn style?

A good first affirmation in the Florence Scovel Shinn style is short, present tense, and attached to something already partly true, because a sentence you cannot say without inner protest will not settle. A pattern close to her structure is to state that the right work, right home or right sum now reaches you, under grace and in a perfect way. Say it aloud twice daily, and rewrite it smaller if it triggers immediate contradiction.

How do you use Florence Scovel Shinn's casting the burden technique?

To use the casting the burden technique, name the specific worry you keep circling, then say aloud that you hand that burden over and are free. Florence Scovel Shinn intended it for the case where an affirmation is accepted intellectually but anxiety continues anyway. The sign it has worked, in her description, is a physical drop in tension, and she treated a returning anxious loop as a signal to repeat the release rather than add more affirmations.

What should you not do when trying Scovel Shinn's method?

Do not treat Scovel Shinn affirmations as a substitute for medical treatment, legal advice or paying a bill, and do not spend money you need as a way of proving faith. Florence Scovel Shinn's books contain healing anecdotes and dramatic financial gestures that a modern reader should treat as period narrative rather than instruction. The practice is safest run alongside ordinary practical action, which is what her own action step asks for.

What are the best known Florence Scovel Shinn quotes, and is the wording reliable?

The most reliable Florence Scovel Shinn quotes come from the opening pages of The Game of Life and How to Play It, where she writes that most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle, it is a game, and that the game of life is a game of boomerangs, with thoughts, deeds and words returning to the sender with astounding accuracy. Two other lines circulate constantly and are genuinely hers: her statement that there is a supply for every demand, and her claim that nothing on earth can resist an absolutely non-resistant person. The title phrase your word is your wand is also hers. Beyond that short list, caution is warranted. Florence Scovel Shinn quotes are heavily shared on social media, and many are either paraphrases that have hardened into quotation marks over time, or lines by other New Thought writers of the period attributed to her because the style is similar. Her books are treated as public domain and reprinted by many publishers, some of which modernize punctuation and occasionally phrasing without saying so, so two paperbacks of the same book can disagree.

There is a practical method for checking a Florence Scovel Shinn quote before using it. Search the exact phrase against a full-text scan of an early printing rather than against quotation sites, which copy from each other and propagate the same errors. If the phrase appears only on image macros and roundup posts and never inside a book scan, treat it as unverified. Be wary of lines that sound more contemporary than her period: vocabulary about energy, vibration in the modern sense, or the universe as an agent usually indicates a later hand. Her own register is devotional and biblical, leaning on words like supply, demonstration and grace, so quotations avoiding that register entirely are suspect. Because her work is out of copyright it is common filler in inspirational content, and the accumulated misattribution now makes her look vaguer than the actual books, which are specific, brisk and occasionally sharp.

Did Florence Scovel Shinn write that the game of life is a game of boomerangs?

Yes. The boomerang line appears near the start of The Game of Life and How to Play It, where Florence Scovel Shinn states that the game of life is a game of boomerangs and that a person's thoughts, deeds and words return to them sooner or later with astounding accuracy. It is one of the few quotations attributed to her that can be located reliably in the primary text, and it represents her central claim accurately.

Why do Florence Scovel Shinn quotes differ between editions?

Florence Scovel Shinn quotes differ between editions because her books are freely reprinted and individual publishers have edited them to varying degrees. Some modernize capitalization and punctuation, others adjust archaic phrasing, and a few abridge without labeling the abridgement. For accurate citation, compare wording across two independent editions or against a scan of an early printing, and quote the version you can actually see.

Which Florence Scovel Shinn books should you read, and in what order?

Florence Scovel Shinn wrote three books in her lifetime and a fourth was assembled after her death, and the sensible entry point is the first. The Game of Life and How to Play It, published in 1925, contains the full argument and most of the famous material, and is short enough to read in an evening. Your Word Is Your Wand, from 1928, is the working companion: a compact collection of affirmations arranged by situation, covering money, employment, health, forgiveness and property sales, useful once you know the theory and nearly meaningless without it. The Secret Door to Success appeared in 1940, the year she died, and covers similar ground with more emphasis on persistence and on the moment where a person must act before the evidence arrives. The Power of the Spoken Word was published after her death, drawn from lecture notes and unpublished material rather than written as a book, and it reads that way, with more repetition and less shape. Many modern volumes bundle all four under a collected title, usually the cheapest way to get them. Read the first, use the second, treat the rest as supplementary.

A practical warning about editions applies to all four. Because the texts are freely reprinted, the market is full of print-on-demand versions with poor typesetting, missing chapters or silently altered wording. Check the page count before buying: The Game of Life and How to Play It is short but not pamphlet-length, and a suspiciously thin edition is often abridged. If you want her actual voice, prefer editions that reproduce the original chapter structure and retain her biblical quotations, which publishers aiming at a secular audience sometimes cut. Removing them takes out the scaffolding her arguments are built on. Free full-text scans of early printings are the safest reference for anyone intending to quote her rather than simply read her.

Did Florence Scovel Shinn write The Power of the Spoken Word herself?

The Power of the Spoken Word was published after Florence Scovel Shinn's death in 1940 and was compiled from her lecture notes and unpublished writing rather than prepared by her as a finished book. The material is hers but the arrangement is editorial, which is why it repeats itself more than the three books she saw into print. Readers wanting her considered presentation should start with The Game of Life and How to Play It.

What is The Secret Door to Success about?

The Secret Door to Success, published in 1940, is Florence Scovel Shinn's book on persistence and on acting before evidence appears. It revisits her earlier material with more attention to the gap between making a claim and seeing a result, which is where she thought most people abandoned the method. It appeared in the year of her death and is the last book she prepared for publication in her lifetime.

Where did Florence Scovel Shinn's ideas come from, and who did she influence?

Florence Scovel Shinn's ideas came out of American New Thought, the movement that developed from the mental-healing work of Phineas Quimby in the mid-1800s and spread through teachers including Emma Curtis Hopkins, whose students founded Unity and Divine Science. By the time Scovel Shinn was writing, the movement's core positions were settled: mind as cause, the Bible read as a manual of mental law, denial and affirmation as the working technique, and health and money treated as legitimate subjects for spiritual practice. Christian Science, founded by Mary Baker Eddy, was the large and contentious presence in the same territory, and Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays sat behind the tradition as its respectable literary ancestor. What Scovel Shinn added was not a new metaphysics but a delivery style: very short books, everyday case histories, and a focus on the spoken sentence rather than on sustained visualization or long meditative practice. Her direct personal lineage is not well documented. It is often asserted that she studied under particular teachers of the period, but the primary evidence for those claims is weak, and her own books credit no teacher by name.

Her influence is easier to see in style than in citation. The pattern she popularized, a pocket-sized book full of situation-specific affirmations written in plain language for a general reader, became the dominant format of twentieth-century self-help metaphysics, and later affirmation-based teachers work in recognizably the same shape. Louise Hay's affirmation lists sorted by problem are structurally close to Your Word Is Your Wand, though Hay's own stated formation was in Religious Science. Because her texts fell out of copyright, they have been recirculated continuously by publishers and by manifestation communities online, giving her a second life far larger than her original readership and considerably less accurate. Hard influence claims are worth resisting: it is fair to say she belongs to the lineage running from Quimby through New Thought into modern law-of-attraction material, and unfair to claim specific teachers took specific ideas from her without documentation.

Did Florence Scovel Shinn study with Emma Curtis Hopkins?

There is no solid documentation that Florence Scovel Shinn studied with Emma Curtis Hopkins, despite the claim appearing in popular accounts. Hopkins taught many founders of the New Thought denominations, so the connection is plausible on timing and geography, but Scovel Shinn's books name no teacher and the surviving record does not establish it. The honest position is that her ideas sit clearly within Hopkins's tradition while her personal training remains unverified.

How does Florence Scovel Shinn relate to modern law of attraction teaching?

Florence Scovel Shinn is one of the ancestors of modern law of attraction teaching, sharing its core claim that inner states produce outer conditions. The differences are substantial. Her framing is explicitly Christian and devotional, she gives spoken words primacy over feeling states, and her divine design clause deliberately limits what a person may demand, close to the opposite of the unrestricted asking encouraged in much contemporary material.

How does Florence Scovel Shinn differ from Emmet Fox and other New Thought teachers?

Florence Scovel Shinn differs from Emmet Fox, her closest contemporary parallel, mainly in ambition and scope. Emmet Fox lectured to very large New York audiences in the same decades and wrote works including The Sermon on the Mount, which reads the Gospel text systematically as spiritual instruction, and the short piece known as The Seven Day Mental Diet, which asks readers to refuse negative thinking for a week. Fox worked as an interpreter of scripture at length and built a sustained theological case. Scovel Shinn did not: she stayed at the level of the individual problem and the individual sentence, and her books are a fraction of the size. Against Joseph Murphy, whose The Power of Your Subconscious Mind came decades later in 1963, the difference is vocabulary. Murphy leaned on the language of psychology and suggestion and cited what he presented as scientific support, while Scovel Shinn stayed devotional and made no scientific claim at all. Against Neville Goddard the contrast is sharpest: Goddard's method is imaginal, asking a person to inhabit a scene implying the wish already fulfilled, while Scovel Shinn's is verbal, asking a person to declare and then act.

The comparison worth making carefully is with Emmet Fox, because the two are often recommended together and their audiences overlapped in the same city at the same time. Fox is the better choice for a reader who wants an argument, a theology and a coherent reading of the Christian text. Scovel Shinn is the better choice for a reader who wants a procedure and does not much care about the justification. Fox's mental diet also asks for something Scovel Shinn never quite does, namely sustained self-monitoring across every area of life at once rather than concentrated work on one presenting problem. A second useful contrast is with Ernest Holmes, who systematized these same ideas into Religious Science with a formal treatment structure and an institution behind it. Scovel Shinn built no institution and left no organizational successor, one reason her name faded for stretches while Holmes's and Fox's did not.

Should you read Emmet Fox or Florence Scovel Shinn first?

Read Florence Scovel Shinn first if you want a short practical method you can test within a week, and Emmet Fox first if you want the reasoning and a developed treatment of the Christian text. The Game of Life and How to Play It takes an evening; Fox's The Sermon on the Mount asks considerably more. Readers who find Scovel Shinn's case histories too convenient often get on better with Fox, who argues rather than illustrates.

How is Florence Scovel Shinn different from Rhonda Byrne's The Secret?

Florence Scovel Shinn's teaching is explicitly religious where Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, published in 2006, is framed around an impersonal universal law. Scovel Shinn addresses God directly, cites the Bible constantly, and restricts requests to what she calls a person's divine design. The Secret places no such limit on wanting and leans on vocabulary of vibration and energy that Scovel Shinn does not use, though both share the claim that inner states shape outer conditions.

What are the criticisms and limits of Florence Scovel Shinn's teaching?

The most serious criticism of Florence Scovel Shinn's teaching is that it makes misfortune look self-inflicted. If words and mental pictures reliably produce conditions, then a person's illness, debt or bereavement carries an implied verdict about their thinking, and the system has no clean way to describe bad luck, structural disadvantage or ordinary biology. Barbara Ehrenreich made this argument against the wider positive-thinking tradition in her 2009 book Bright-sided, written after her own experience of breast cancer treatment and the pressure she encountered to stay positive. A second criticism concerns evidence: Scovel Shinn's books consist almost entirely of anecdotes about unnamed students with unverifiable outcomes, selected by the teacher whose method they support, and no failure rate is ever given. A third concerns health, since her books contain healing narratives that a reader might take as instruction rather than as period testimony and so delay treatment. Her claims about the effect of speech on external events have not been demonstrated under controlled conditions and should be described as her position rather than as fact. Some financial anecdotes also model behavior that would be straightforwardly reckless to imitate.

Separating the fair criticisms from the weak ones helps. The weak version is that affirmation practice is useless because talking does not change reality. That misses what the material genuinely supplies: stating a belief aloud makes it inspectable, and her action step is behavioral commitment of the kind any coach would endorse. The strong version is harder to answer. The system is unfalsifiable as she presents it, because a result confirms the method while a non-result is attributed to insufficient conviction or to the thing not belonging to the person by divine right, so no outcome can count against it. Readers should also notice what the framework does not address. It offers nothing on grief, little on injustice that is not the sufferer's doing, and no account of situations that must simply be borne. Anyone facing serious illness, a mental health condition or bereavement will find it at best incomplete and at worst an added burden of blame.

Is there scientific evidence for Florence Scovel Shinn's claims?

There is no scientific evidence that speaking affirmations changes external events as Florence Scovel Shinn described. Research on self-affirmation in psychology examines something different, namely the effect of reflecting on personal values on stress and defensiveness, and it does not support claims about words influencing money, other people or physical healing. Her claims should be presented as her position rather than as findings, and her healing anecdotes are not clinical evidence.

Who should avoid Florence Scovel Shinn's teaching?

Florence Scovel Shinn's teaching is a poor fit for anyone in acute grief, anyone managing a serious illness, and anyone prone to blaming themselves for events outside their control, since the system's logic points responsibility inward by default. It is also unsuitable as a financial strategy, given the anecdotes of students spending money they did not have to demonstrate faith. Readers in those situations should treat the material as historical reading rather than guidance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Florence Scovel Shinn?

Florence Scovel Shinn was an American illustrator who became a New Thought writer and lecturer, born in Camden, New Jersey in 1871 and died in New York City in 1940. She trained as an artist at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, married the painter Everett Shinn in 1898, and illustrated children's books and magazine fiction before turning to metaphysical teaching. She is remembered for four short books, the first being The Game of Life and How to Play It in 1925.

What is The Game of Life and How to Play It about?

The Game of Life and How to Play It argues that life behaves like a game with knowable rules rather than a battle, and that the rules concern what a person imagines, expects and says out loud. Florence Scovel Shinn treats spoken words and mental pictures as causes and outward conditions as their effects. The book covers what she calls the law of prosperity, non-resistance, forgiveness, casting the burden and intuition, illustrating each with short anonymous case histories from her teaching practice.

What did Florence Scovel Shinn mean by your word is your wand?

Your word is your wand was Florence Scovel Shinn's way of saying that ordinary speech is the working instrument of the mind, so a sentence spoken casually carries the same force as one spoken deliberately. She used it as the title of her 1928 book of affirmations. The consequence in her system is that complaining aloud about money or health is not neutral venting but active construction of the thing complained about, and should be replaced rather than merely regretted.

How do you write a Florence Scovel Shinn affirmation?

A Scovel Shinn affirmation is written in the first person and present tense, names a specific outcome, and adds a clause such as by divine right or under grace that leaves the means open. She often paired it with a denial, so a statement rejecting the appearance came first and the affirmation second. The sentence is meant to be spoken aloud rather than only thought, repeated until it stops meeting internal argument, and followed by a small action that assumes the result.

Are Florence Scovel Shinn's books in the public domain?

Florence Scovel Shinn's books are widely treated as public domain in the United States and are freely reprinted, which is why dozens of competing editions exist. The practical consequence is that wording varies. Some editions silently modernize her punctuation and occasionally her phrasing, so a quotation checked against one paperback may not match another. For accurate quotation, compare two independent editions or use a scan of an early printing.

What is the main criticism of Florence Scovel Shinn's teaching?

The main criticism of Florence Scovel Shinn's teaching is that it makes misfortune look self-inflicted. If words and thoughts reliably produce conditions, then illness, poverty and loss carry an implied verdict on the person experiencing them. Critics of the wider positive-thinking tradition, including the writer Barbara Ehrenreich in her 2009 book Bright-sided, argue this shifts blame onto individuals and crowds out structural and medical explanations. Her evidence is also anecdotal throughout, consisting of unnamed students and unverifiable outcomes.

How is Florence Scovel Shinn different from Neville Goddard?

Florence Scovel Shinn worked mainly with spoken words and Neville Goddard worked mainly with imagination. Scovel Shinn's method is a decree said aloud, backed by an outward act of faith and framed in devotional Christian vocabulary about divine supply. Neville Goddard asked people to enter an imagined scene implying the wish fulfilled and to feel it as present, and he moved over his career toward the position that God is the human imagination itself, a claim Scovel Shinn never makes.