The Science of Getting Rich E-Book

Wallace Wattles

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Capstone Classics
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Seitenzahl: 258

Beschreibung

The original guide to creating wealth!

With this seminal book, Wallace Wattles popularized the Law of Attraction, the powerful concept that inspired The Secret. The Science of Getting Rich explains how to attract wealth, overcome emotional barriers, and apply foolproof methods to bring financial success into your life.

This special 100-year edition contains the complete, original text, along with never-before published biographical information on Wattles, and a foreword by Catherine Ponder, the doyenne of modern prosperity writers. It also features an introduction from personal development authority Tom Butler-Bowdon, plus another Wattles classic, The Science of Being Great.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Foreword

Introduction

WATTLES’ WORLD

A NEW DIRECTION

THE RIGHT WAY TO RICHES

WHY YOU NEED TO BE RICH

ALWAYS MORE THAN ENOUGH

MENTAL MECHANICS OF PROSPERITY

HOW IT ACTUALLY COMES

INSPIRING AND SPREADING PROSPERITY

BECOMING A CREATOR, NOT A COMPETITOR

GRATITUDE

FINAL THOUGHTS

WATTLES’ LEGACY

GETTING RICH AND BEING GREAT

LETTER FROM FLORENCE WATTLES TO ELIZABETH TOWNE

SOURCES

NOTES

FURTHER READING

WALLACE WATTLES BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT TOM BUTLER-BOWDON

THE SCIENCE OF GETTING RICH

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1 - THE RIGHT TO BE RICH

CHAPTER 2 - THERE IS A SCIENCE OF GETTING RICH

CHAPTER 3 - IS OPPORTUNITY MONOPOLIZED?

CHAPTER 4 - THE FIRST PRINCIPLE IN THE SCIENCE OF GETTING RICH

CHAPTER 5 - INCREASING LIFE

CHAPTER 6 - HOW RICHES COME TO YOU

CHAPTER 7 - GRATITUDE

CHAPTER 8 - THINKING IN THE CERTAIN WAY

CHAPTER 9 - HOW TO USE THE WILL

CHAPTER 10 - FURTHER USE OF THE WILL

CHAPTER 11 - ACTING IN THE CERTAIN WAY

CHAPTER 12 - EFFICIENT ACTION

CHAPTER 13 - GETTING INTO THE RIGHT BUSINESS

CHAPTER 14 - THE IMPRESSION OF INCREASE

CHAPTER 15 - THE ADVANCING MAN

CHAPTER 16 - SOME CAUTIONS, AND CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

CHAPTER 17 - SUMMARY OF THE SCIENCE OF GETTING RICH

THE SCIENCE OF BEING GREAT

CHAPTER 1 - ANY PERSON MAY BECOME GREAT

CHAPTER 2 - HEREDITY AND OPPORTUNITY

CHAPTER 3 - THE SOURCE OF POWER

CHAPTER 4 - THE MIND OF GOD

CHAPTER 5 - PREPARATION

CHAPTER 6 - THE SOCIAL POINT OF VIEW

CHAPTER 7 - THE INDIVIDUAL POINT OF VIEW

CHAPTER 8 - CONSECRATION

CHAPTER 9 - IDENTIFICATION

CHAPTER 10 - IDEALIZATION

CHAPTER 11 - REALIZATION

CHAPTER 12 - HURRY AND HABIT

CHAPTER 13 - THOUGHT

CHAPTER 14 - ACTION AT HOME

CHAPTER 15 - ACTION ABROAD

CHAPTER 16 - SOME FURTHER EXPLANATIONS

CHAPTER 17 - MORE ABOUT THOUGHT

CHAPTER 18 - JESUS’ IDEA OF GREATNESS

CHAPTER 19 - A VIEW OF EVOLUTION

CHAPTER 20 - SERVING GOD

CHAPTER 21 - A MENTAL EXERCISE

VIEWPOINT

CONSECRATION

IDENTIFICATION

IDEALIZATION

REALIZATION

CHAPTER 22 - A SUMMARY OF THE SCIENCE OF BEING GREAT

This edition first published 2010

Introduction copyright © Tom Butler-Bowdon, 2010

The original material in this book is a reproduction of the complete 1910 edition of The Science of Getting Rich, and the complete 1911 edition of The Science of Being Great, written by Wallace Delois Wattles, published by The Elizabeth Towne Company of Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA. Both are now in the public domain.

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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

eISBN : 978-0-857-08087-5

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Set in 11/15pt, NewBaskerville-Roman by Thomson Digital , Padstow

FOREWORD

When I began to study, and later teach and write on the subject of prosperity, Wallace D. Wattles was among my early influences. I marvelled them then, as I do now, at the succinct, deliberate, direct, un-apologetic and uncompromising way he wrote on the subject - as early as 1910.

It has been said that “Poverty is a form of hell, caused by man’s blindness to God’s good.” The author knew this as he explained:

Firstly, the psychology of wealth; and, secondly, the definite steps to attain it.

He further stated: “There is a science to getting rich and anyone can do it. Indeed, it is your right to be rich and your life will be incomplete without it.”

Many success-themed authors followed him later in the 20th Century and into the 21st Century, but none have surpassed his simple message: “Rich or poor, it’s good to have money.”

This book shows you how to do this and much more . . .

Enjoy!

Catherine Ponder is the doyenne of modern prosperity writers. Her work includes the classic, The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity, and more than a dozen other best-selling titles including The Dynamic Laws of Healing, The Millionaire Moses and Open Your Mind To Receive. Ordained a Unity Church minister in 1956, she launched three ministries in Alabama and Texas before establishing her global ministry in Palm Desert, California. Listed in Who’s Who and Who’s Who In Religion, she is a long-standing lecturer of note and a significant influence on writers in the inspirational field.

AN INTRODUCTION

Tom Butler-Bowdon

“Life has advanced so far, and become so complex, that even the most ordinary man or woman requires a great amount of wealth in order to live in a manner that even approaches completeness . . . To understand the science of getting rich is therefore the most essential of all knowledge.”

Wallace Wattles

In 2004, Australian television executive Rhonda Byrne was at breaking point. A divorced mother of two dealing with her father’s recent death, she was also having business problems. Her accountant had just phoned to say she was only a couple of months away from going broke, and she still had two films to complete.

At home one day, she poured out her troubles to her daughter, Hayley, who listened and tried to reassure her. She came back a minute later with a bundle of photocopied pages and gave them to her mother. It was a copy of The Science of Getting Rich. The old book “lit a fire in me”, she recalls. “It was exactly the opposite of the way I thought life worked.”1 She began researching the roots of Wattles’ philosophy, and within a year had produced her famous film, The Secret. Made for only $3 million, The Secret sold two million copies in download and DVD format, with sales of the book version passing a million copies. Though it was based on interviews with contemporary ‘law of attraction’ teachers, she was quick to credit Wattles as her original inspiration. After a century of relative obscurity, her work brought Wattles back into the limelight.

Yet even now, what do we really know of Wattles or his book?

To understand The Science of Getting Rich and its power, we must get a sense of the time and context in which it was written. We will also briefly discuss its companion work, The Science of Being Great.

WATTLES’ WORLD

In 1890s and 1900s America, many people felt oppressed by a system where great industrial trusts and extremely wealthy individuals held sway. Bill Gates is often seen as the richest capitalist of our age, but in relative terms he did not match the wealth of Rockefeller and Carnegie in their time2.

In a more brutal economic era without safety nets, the average person clung onto jobs they hated or kept up businesses that weren’t doing well for fear of slipping through the cracks entirely.

From a poor rural family himself, Wallace Delois Wattles would not have escaped such fears. Not a great deal is known about his early life. He was born in rural Illinois in 1860. His father died when he was only 10, but his mother remained a strong part of Wallace’s life, later living with him and his own family, which included wife Abby, son Russell and daughters, Florence and Agnes3.

Wattles had enjoyed only a rudimentary school education, and for several years worked as a farm labourer. However, by his mid-30s he had attained a reasonable, although hardly lucrative, position in the Methodist church. Though the records are scant, we can assume it was a ministry role.

A NEW DIRECTION

In a time of change in American church circles, Wattles became attracted to reform preachers like George D. Herron, who was spreading the word of the ‘social gospel’, which held that Christ must be at the centre of economic and social life. When, in December 1896, he saw Herron speak at a conference in Chicago, it changed Wattles2 life.

Herron was controversial. From his examination of the life and teachings of Jesus, he argued that a form of socialism was the most humane and equable form of political organization - in distinction to the ruthless, dehumanising forces of capitalism. Christian Socialists rallied against the ‘industrial despotism’ of late 19th century America, with its concentration of wealth and power in a chosen few. The system had led to corruption and monopolies, and crushed the ability of individuals to determine their destinies. Even worse, this view held, the established churches in America had offered no resistance to the damage that raw capitalism had done to the fabric of society4. Their unholy alliance with big industry was light years from what Christ would have wanted, Herron believed, and as he put it in one of his tracts, “The possession of power over others is inherently destructive both to the possessor of the power and to those over whom it is exercised.”

Wattles left the conference convinced of these ideas, but inevitably they ran counter to the Methodist church. Forced out of his job by the church, he began writing articles for Nautilus, a popular magazine based on ‘New Thought’ spiritual principles and run by Elizabeth Towne. In these articles he developed a distinctive writing style and philosophy, and they became, along with weekly talks, his main source of income.

THE RIGHT WAY TO RICHES

Wattles was by all accounts a loving father and husband, and took his breadwinner role seriously. He naturally wanted to give his family everything they wanted, and this meant attaining a level of private wealth. Yet he was not prepared to give up his Christian or socialist beliefs. How to reconcile the two?

When he sat down to write The Science of Getting Rich, it may have helped that Herron, his original inspiration, had become tarnished by a divorce scandal and his supporters had ebbed away. He may have felt free to pursue a less dogmatic vision of a Christian state. Indeed, compared to an earlier book he wrote, Jesus: The Man and His Work, the Science of Getting Rich does not assume Christian belief on the part of the reader.

Wattles had, anyway, been absorbing the ideas and teachings of a wide range of philosophers and religious thinkers, among them Leibniz, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Emerson and Swedenborg. He was also influenced by Eastern religion. This philosophical and spiritual journey had brought him to a Monistic view of the universe, which holds that everything in space and time is a flowering or expression of the One Spiritual Substance. Monism’s lack of distinction between Spirit and Matter implied that we could bring whatever we wanted into our lives merely through the power of directed, purposeful thought. In this insight, Wattles believed he had found the secret to prosperity. It did not involve battling others on the bloody field of capitalism, but instead developing a greater attunement to universal laws. This was the heart of his ‘science’ of wealth creation.

Metaphysically, Wattles could now justify the pursuit of wealth, but he knew that his potential audience was after something more direct and useful. So, in the first lines of The Science of Getting Rich, he notes that it is “not a treatise upon theories”, but rather “intended for the men and women whose most pressing need is for money.” He wanted to enrich his readers, but he also needed (given his principles and the circles he moved in) to avoid any of the grasping and greed of the capitalist ethos.

The book first affirms that the desire to have more and get more is good, a natural part of being human and what God wants for us. Yet such desires are to be realized through the creative expression of the individual, not as a pawn in some battle between capitalist titans. The creative pursuit of a calling led to genuine abundance, whereas fighting with another over a particular resource or market rested on a false belief in scarcity, and was, ultimately, a life-defeating exercise. The spiritually right way, he argued, is through creative endeavour that expresses our individuality.

This is the book in essence, but let us go deeper.

WHY YOU NEED TO BE RICH

“You must get rid of the last vestige of the old idea that there is a Deity whose will it is that you should be poor, or whose purposes may be served by keeping you in poverty.”

Christian belief in Wattles’ era came with a lot of baggage about money and wealth. Many believed that poverty meant purity, and wealth equated to sin. Against this, Wattles argues that the nature of life is continuous increase and expansion. Therefore, to grow and develop into everything we can be, we must be able to get our hands on the things we need. In his words, “We must get rich, so that we can live more.” The same thing that makes plants want to grow is what gives us the urge for more: it is simply “Life, seeking fuller expression.”

On a practical level, the complexity and advanced nature of modern life means that the average person has to command a lot more resources in order to live a full life. You need money to fulfil any talents you have, and to have the time to allow your soul’s development to unfold; money to travel, to buy books, to surround yourself with art and beauty, all of which enrich the mind and make it more likely you can live a complete life. When you are a physical body and brain in a world governed by time and space, it is no use thinking of yourself as a spiritual being alone. To fulfil your spiritual potential, paradoxically you need to have command of physical resources, of things. And society is so organized that things cost money.

Learning how to become rich, therefore, is “the most essential of all knowledge”, Wallace ascertained.

What makes you rich

What brings about wealth? Not environment alone, Wattles observes. If it was, all the people in one neighbourhood or city would be rich, while all those in another would be poor. In fact, you find rich people and poor people, often of very similar backgrounds, living near each other.

It is not a matter of choosing the right profession either, because people get rich in every field. If, then, given access to similar resources, one person stays poor while another becomes rich, is there not a ‘certain way’ that the rich person follows to do well? The certain way is not talent, because plenty of people with little talent become rich, while those with seemingly much are poor. In fact, Wattles observes, the rich do not possess talents measurably greater than the poor 5.

Yet neither is wealth the result of thrift alone, since free spenders often end up rich. As Wattles bluntly puts it, “Talented people get rich; and blockheads get rich; intellectually brilliant people get rich, and very stupid people get rich . . . If anybody else in your town can get rich, so can you; and if anybody in your state can get rich, so can you.” You obviously need a basic ability to think, understand and act, but beyond this there is no requirement for brilliance.

So what does increase the probability you will get rich? The book gives some common sense advice: Go into a business you like which requires the expression of your talents; Work in a business in the right location, where it is likely to have a good market; And make sure your field or industry is growing.

Many people blame external circumstances for their current position, but Wattles warns us never to think that we are being kept down by ‘the boss’, or ‘the company’ or ‘the system’. We are where we are today because we simply have not bothered to understand the laws of wealth.

ALWAYS MORE THAN ENOUGH

To make the most of The Science of Getting Rich, we have to really grasp its underlying philosophy of abundance. Portraying nature as “an inexhaustible storehouse of riches”, Wattles noted that when a particular resource appears to run low, humans always find or develop another, better resource to take its place.

‘Running short’ is a false concept, because the nature of the universe is perpetual creation. One of the more powerful lines in the book is: “There can be no lack unless God is to contradict himself and nullify his own works.” Lack has no objective reality, and is simply the absence of abundance. By focusing on abundance alone, we are focused on the essential truth of the universe.

If you have ever wondered why there are incredible riches in the world, yet you yourself are not, Wattles says, it is because you will have become too focused on what you don’t have. Instead, you must really appreciate wealth and see yourself as part of its flow. Change your mindset from the need to ‘get’ money, to being a living representation of prosperity itself.

MENTAL MECHANICS OF PROSPERITY

Every chapter ends with a 3-point statement which readers are asked to make the basis of their new life. “The science of getting rich”, Wattles states, “begins with the absolute acceptance of this faith.”

In essence, it says:

Behind the physical appearance of the universe is a thought substance, or field of thought (variously called Substance or the Formless);

What is imagined in this field becomes reality;

Human beings, when they impress an individual thought within this universal thought field, see it naturally become realized.

There is only one ‘Thinking Substance’ from which all things come, so aligning yourself with the Source’s field of thought means you become a sort of co-creator. You share its intelligence and creative power. However, you must recognize that It, and not the world of appearances, is the real Truth that moves the universe. Impress within this universal field of thought what you want, and it cannot avoid coming to pass.

Some years later, Catherine Ponder, the doyenne of modern prosperity writers (see Foreword), echoed Wattles’ thoughts when she wrote that the first thing a person must do to move into a state of prosperity is to recognize that “God is the source of your supply”. That is, not the persons (e.g. a boss, a family member) or particular conditions (e.g. the economy) that apparently determine your prosperity. This is, of course, difficult to do, but both she and Wattles believed it to be the essence of personal power. A person who does so becomes master of their destiny and can have what they want.

HOW IT ACTUALLY COMES

If our desires are heartfelt and beneficent to all, we shouldn’t be shy about “asking largely”. Wattles remembers that promise from the Bible: “It is your Father’s pleasure to give you the kingdom”.

Yet what we want is never conjured out of thin air as if by a genie. If we have impressed the image of it onto the universal thought field, Wattles notes, it will surely come to us, but “through the ways of established trade and commerce.” We can relax and know that what we need will come, often in surprising ways. As there is never a limited supply, we don’t have to hurry, snatch, covet or steal.

The Universe naturally wants you to have everything you need to grow and advance, but Wattles includes a caveat: what you do in life must be in harmony with its good purposes. This means: Not desiring to be rich in order to live a life of excess, existing only for bodily pleasures; Not desiring to be rich just to please your ego, hankering after fame or to outshine others; and not desiring to be rich only to ‘save mankind’. Such nobility is certainly a part of life, but not all of it. God does not want you to sacrifice yourself for others. Extreme altruism is as much a mistake as selfishness. Instead, Wattles says, “you can help others more by making the most of yourself than in any other way.”

INSPIRING AND SPREADING PROSPERITY

“Things are not brought into being by thinking about their opposites”, Wattles writes. If you want to help the poor, don’t go about studying the causes or effects of poverty. Instead, get rich yourself, so that you can inspire the poor. Charity may help for a time, but people only ever lift themselves out of poverty by being inspired to do so. If you do ever speak of the poor, he advises, speak of them with an air of congratulation, never pity, for they are on their way to wealth.

Never talk about your past financial troubles, which will “mentally class you with the poor”, and furthermore “Never speak of the times as being hard, or of business conditions as being doubtful”. If you have accepted a certain new way of seeing the universe, don’t let yourself be exposed to conflicting ideas. “Think of the riches the world is coming into, instead of the poverty it is growing out of.”

In whatever line of work or business you are in, you will succeed and prosper to the extent that you offer others the possibility of increasing what they have, be it things, money, love or health. As Wattles puts it, “ . . . all men and women are attracted to him who can give them more of the means of life.” Keep the image in your mind at all times that you are a person who advances others, who brings more life and more wealth to all. Let this be your Golden Rule: what I want for myself, I want for everybody.

BECOMING A CREATOR, NOT A COMPETITOR

“You must get rid of the thought of competition. You are to create, not to compete for what is already created . . . You do not have to take anything away from any one . . . You do not have to drive sharp bargains.”

Central to the book’s message is that as unique, sovereign individuals, we progress most easily in life by expressing that individuality. It is unwise and unproductive to think that we need to advance ourselves at the expense of another.

Battling to get laws changed or railing against bankers is also a waste of our energies. “When you are in the competitive mind”, he notes, “you have lost the cooperation of the Mind of the Whole.”

The gains you make on the plane of competition either do not last (“yours to-day, and another’s tomorrow”) or they are spiritually unsatisfying. Competing suggests there is a finite supply of something that all must fight for, but in fact, if we are all trying to realise a personal vision of how things should be, there is no end to new products, services and wealth. You will have plenty of opportunities:

“When you get out of the competitive mind you will understand that you never need to act hastily. No one else is going to beat you to the thing you want to do; there is enough for all. If one space is taken, another and a better one will be opened for you a little farther on; there is plenty of time. When you are in doubt, wait.”

With echoes of a world economic crisis that would come almost a century after his book was published, Wattles writes: “The more men who get rich on the competitive plane, the worse for others; the more who get rich on the creative plane, the better for others.”

He warns that, if you are currently in a business that doesn’t give people real value, or takes advantage of them, “get out of it at once”.

GRATITUDE

The whole process of getting in tune with universal law, Wattles says, can be summed up in one word: Gratitude.

He observes that, “Many people who order their lives rightly in all other ways are kept in poverty by their lack of gratitude.”

“The grateful mind is constantly fixed upon the best; therefore it tends to become the best; ittakes the form or character of the best, and will receive the best.”

By contrast, focus on what is bad or squalid in your life, at what you don’t have, and you start to go backwards. Such thoughts firmly implant you where you are, without hope of moving on. Gratefulness for what you do have opens the doors to more. This is because gratitude connects us with the Power that gives and sustains life, and the closer we live to this Source of all wealth, “the more wealth we shall receive”.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This is a work that could only have come out of a capitalist society, and yet it steadfastly denounces the competitive instinct and any kind of material grasping, putting in its place an emphasis on creativity, cooperation, giving and gratitude. Wattles even praises the cooperative enterprises that had begun to spring up in Europe in his time, designed to benefit workers and their communities.

So this is the strange paradox of The Science of Getting Rich: it was written by a socialist6.

Yet perhaps his blend of socialist vision and money-making is not so incongruent after all. In our time, when lightly regulated capitalism in the financial world has been blamed for much misery, Wattles’ ideas can be seen in a new light. His vision of people expressing their gifts and being rewarded for it, with everyone finding their place in the economy as a valued member, now looks enlightened.

Given the author’s political and spiritual background, we can be assured that The Science of Getting Rich is not a greed manual but guides the reader to riches and abundance in an honourable way.

WATTLES’ LEGACY

Wattles’ concepts are not scientific in the normal sense of the word, and yet he was convinced that the ‘certain way’ he advocated would not fail to provide great increase. Did Wattles himself become rich? There seem to be no records of his estate after his tragically early death at 50 (from tuberculosis), but according to his daughter, Florence, he did, in his last years, achieve real prosperity. Writing to her father’s friend and publisher of Nautilus, Elizabeth Towne, just after the event, she noted: “In the last three years he made lots of money, and had good health, except for his extreme frailty.”

The Science of Getting Rich outlived its author and continues to serve its intended purpose. As a piece of writing it has travelled well, thanks in part to its author’s use of simple language and only minor reference to people and events of his time. Wattles clearly spent time polishing the work to increase its impact and power.

Florence’s letter (reproduced in the following chapter), apart from being one of the few records we have of Wattles’ life, gives a sense of someone who never gave up on a vision of a better world.

GETTING RICH AND BEING GREAT

The Science of Getting Rich was actually written as the first part of a trilogy including The Science of Being Great (or How to be a Genius) and The Science of Being Well.

Though we have no specific information on why Wattles wrote The Science of Being Great, in presenting Wattles’ overall philosophy of life it forms the perfect companion to the more focused The Science of Getting Rich. This is why we have chosen to place the two texts in this one volume.

Why The Science of Getting Rich became more famous can be considered one of the mysteries of publishing, but The Science of Being Great is itself a remarkable work. To make it your sole reference book for self-development, ignoring all others, would not put you at a disadvantage. In it, Wattles reminds us that “there are no ‘common’ people”, and “There is a genius in every man and woman, waiting to be brought forth.” He notes that all life’s experiences are “designed by Providence to force men and women . . . to cease being creatures of circumstances and master their environment.” We must always be reminded that we are not victims of heredity, he points out, but can truly make our world. The book is perhaps more theological than Getting Rich, and yet, far from being a religious nut, Wattles urges his readers to study Darwin among others, and above all think for themselves.

Both books provide a rational justification for why every human being naturally desires more out of life. In The Science of Getting Rich, Wattles demonstrates why it is quite right that we should want more wealth in order to fulfil our potential in every way. In The Science of Being Great, he states:

“Man is formed for growth, and he is under the necessity of growing.

It is essential to his happiness that he should continuously advance.”

Wanting more, getting more, and being more is nothing to be ashamed of, but simply how things are meant to be in our universe.

While both writings stress that there is a Cosmic Intelligence, an unseen order that moves the universe, in The Science of Being Great Wattles convincingly argues that a person who consciously attunes themselves to this force cannot help but become great, since they become a vehicle for the perfect expression of divine intention. He makes the point that all great people exhibit ‘unwavering faith’, and are fully aware that the chief challenge of life - and its chief success - is to be able to replace fear with faith on a daily basis. Such a person apprehends the world as it exists today to be ‘all good’, and knows they have a part to play in its being brought to completion.

Most of the problems we see, Wattles argues, are the result of people simply being unwilling to sit alone and think things through. Yet this kind of concentrated thought, he notes, is another trait common to all people of genuine power.

Both books use plain language and bombastic titles. Both are rather short. Each has the qualities of a concentrate, distilling a lifetime of meditation, observation and spiritual revelation. As Wattles wrote three books of this type, he evidently felt he had finally found the right format for his teachings.