New Thought Movement · 1910 to Present · Wealth Follows a Precise Mental and Behavioral Formula
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.Wallace D. Wattles — The Science of Getting Rich, 1910
Wallace Wattles published The Science of Getting Rich in 1910, presenting wealth creation not as a matter of luck, circumstance, or superior intelligence, but as the result of a precise mental and behavioral formula available to any person who applies it. The metaphysics of the book — a "thinking stuff" permeating the universe — has not aged well, but the practical principles embedded in Wattles's account have proven remarkably durable. The book was a direct inspiration for Rhonda Byrne's The Secret, but it is a more careful and practically grounded work than its successor.
Wattles's core claim is that getting rich requires doing things in a certain way — and that this "certain way" involves, above all, maintaining a clear and specific mental image of what one intends to have, doing one's present work with complete excellence, and taking whatever action is available in the direction of the goal. The mental and behavioral elements are inseparable: the vivid mental image without the excellent action produces nothing; the excellent action without the clear mental direction produces effort without destination. The formula requires both.
What is philosophically interesting about Wattles is his insistence on genuine value creation as the basis of wealth. He argues that the person who gets rich through competition — by taking from others — is on an unstable foundation; the person who gets rich through creation — by adding genuine value to the world — builds something solid and sustainable. This is not mere ethics; it is, Wattles argues, a description of how wealth actually works over time. The insight anticipates by a century the modern understanding of wealth creation in positive-sum rather than zero-sum terms.
Wattles wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the combination of rapid industrial expansion, rising literacy, and the New Thought movement had created an audience hungry for practical philosophy of achievement. His book sits in a lineage that includes Orison Swett Marden's Pushing to the Front (1894) and anticipates Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (1937). The connecting thread is the insistence that success is not mysterious, not reserved for the specially privileged, and not a matter of luck — it follows from specific mental and behavioral patterns that anyone can learn to apply.
The book's influence has been remarkable and somewhat ironic. Wattles intended it as a practical philosophical treatise; it became instead the foundational text of what is now a multi-billion-dollar personal development industry. Rhonda Byrne has said that reading Wattles was the beginning of The Secret. Napoleon Hill's account of the Mastermind Alliance and the subconscious mind draws on ideas that Wattles developed more briefly. The book's longevity — it remains in print and widely read more than a century after publication — is its own evidence that the insights it contains are not merely products of their era.
The practical philosophy of value creation that Wattles articulates — do excellent work in your present circumstances, maintain a clear vision of what you are building toward, and act with confident expectation rather than anxious grasping — has been confirmed by study after study of what successful people in every field actually do. The metaphysics may be wrong; the psychology is sound.
The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.Wallace D. Wattles — The Science of Getting Rich, 1910