The Science of Getting Rich: The Inspiring Guide to Wealth and Success (Classic Edition)

By Wallace D. Wattles

The Science of Getting Rich is considered one of the most influential and acclaimed self-help books in the last 100 years on achieving financial success through the power of positive thinking.

Wallace D Wattles presents a step-by-step guide to both financial and spiritual empowerment which he believed could be attained by transforming attitudes and harnessing opportunities. This book not only explains the "Certain Way" of thinking that is crucial to getting rich, but it provides useful tips on "Gratitude" and "Getting into the Right Business".

Written to inspire anyone looking for financial and spiritual betterment, this book tells you how easy it is to acquire wisdom and wealth...if only you know how.

This handsome classic edition contains the original and unabridged text. See for yourself why this perennial bestseller remains so popular ninety years after it was first published.

ABOUT THE SERIES: Arcturus Classics for Financial Freedom brings together handsome jacketed hardback editions of some of the most renowned personal finance books of all time, featuring classic and unabridged text.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398829176

Wallace D. Wattles

Wallace Delois Wattles (1860-1911) was the author of numerous books, the best known of which is The Science of Getting Rich. He experienced failure after failure in his early life until after many years of study and experimentation he formulated a set of principles that, with scientific precision, create financial and spiritual wealth. He died a prosperous man in 1911.

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Introduction

Have you ever watched those superhero movies where each character has some particular skill or ability that is impossible and awe-inspiring? Well, I’m here to tell you that you too have a super-power—it is based in your mind, in fact it is your mind, and it can be used to harness wealth beyond your greatest dreams. I say I’m here to tell you that but actually I’m just parroting what a far greater writer said more than a century ago. In 1910 Wallace Wattles published The Science of Getting Rich. The book was to change many lives, not least that of Rhonda Byrne who in 2006 released the best-selling book The Secret, crediting Wattles’ book as the influence for her own phenomenally successful book and film.

We are taught in modern life to be somewhat embarrassed about money and about being wealthy. It is garish and gauche to say we love money. Surely it is immoral and anti-spiritual too? Wattles was having none of that, he had a deep concern for spirituality and he believed that it is our moral duty to become rich, in order to develop as much as we can.

Born in 1860 in Illinois, he was the son of a gardener and had very little formal education. He reportedly endured many failures in his life until he began using the principles within The Science of Getting Rich. According to his daughter Florence, by the time he died, he had made lots of money.

Wattles was part of the New Thought movement: a spiritually focused philosophy that began in the early nineteenth century and was developed by a number of different thinkers including writers such as Napoleon Hill and Elizabeth Towne. The New Thought movement is founded on the idea of the omnipresence of God and the ability of people to heal themselves and others by good, correct thinking; the result of recognizing the true nature of the universe. New Thought thinkers believed that everyone has within them the ability to develop their physical, intellectual, and spiritual capacity to the highest level.

Within the book itself Wattles takes a long time before he gets to the juice of how to apply New Thought principles to getting the readies and it takes a few chapters before he actually explicitly says what the Certain Way is to getting rich. In modern life, we have no patience for the preamble so here’s the 411: "There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. A thought, in this substance produces the thing that is imaged by the thought. Man can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created."

He does not use the word science in his title lightly: Wattles believed, beyond any doubt, that if you completely and utterly fix the above concept into your mind and operate from its truth then you will have everything you want. Here’s an example: when you were little, was there something you wanted so bad, you could almost feel it in your hands? Did you cut out a picture of it and stick it on your pinboard? Write to Santa requesting it? Beg your parents until they banned you from mentioning the item? Did you get it? Unless you had parents with wills of steel, you probably got your wish. Children are generally less burdened by doubt—although they still have plenty of fears which can also cause blocks—but a lack of doubt and a bit more of a belief in magic is the gift of childhood. We need to tap into that.

While Wattles would probably be highly irritated at me for using the word magic for the science of getting rich, having tried it myself, it sure feels like magic. I started very small, just an experiment for the purposes of this book. I needed a new smart-phone but couldn’t afford one without taking out a lengthy contract. I imagined what colour and make my phone would be and I imagined my fingers dialling numbers, sending texts, checking the internet, and using all the other bells and whistles that most modern smart-phones have. I then promptly forgot about it, as I knew it was already mine and about to arrive. Out of the blue, a friend emailed and asked if I still needed a new phone. Her partner worked for one of the leading smart-phone companies and had a spare set just sitting around at home. It happened to be the exact make I wanted and in the exact right colour. How can you say that’s not magic?

I now apply the Wattles philosophy to everything I do and, while I am not exactly a millionaire yet, I have no doubt that it is now only a matter of time. I hope you find answers in this book that will also allow you to get rich with Wallace Wattles’s timeless advice.

Tania Ahsan, 2022

Preface

This book is pragmatical, not philosophical; a practical manual, not a treatise upon theories. It is intended for the men and women whose most pressing need is for money; who wish to get rich first, and philosophize afterward. It is for those who have, so far, found neither the time, the means, nor the opportunity to go deeply into the study of metaphysics, but who want results and who are willing to take the conclusions of science as a basis for action, without going into all the processes by which those conclusions were reached.

It is expected that the reader will take the fundamental statements upon faith, just as he would take statements concerning a law of electrical action if they were promulgated by a Marconi or an Edison; and, taking the statements upon faith, that he will prove their truth by acting upon them without fear or hesitation. Every man or woman who does this will certainly get rich; for the science herein applied is an exact science, and failure is impossible. For the benefit, however, of those who wish to investigate philosophical theories and so secure a logical basis for faith, I will here cite certain authorities.

The monistic theory of the universe—the theory that One is All, and that All is One; that one Substance manifests itself as the seeming many elements of the material world—is of Hindu origin, and has been gradually winning its way into the thought of the western world for two hundred years. It is the foundation of all the Oriental philosophies, and of those of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Emerson.

The reader who would dig to the philosophical foundations is advised to read Hegel and Emerson; and he will do well to read The Eternal News, a very excellent pamphlet published by J. J. Brown, 300 Cathcart Road, Govanhill, Glasgow, Scotland. He may also find some help in a series of articles written by the author, which were published in Nautilus (Holyoke, Mass.) during the spring and summer of 1909, under the title