The Science Of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles is a timeless classic written many years ago. Over a century ago, in fact.
But it's a practical, step-by-step guide whose thought-provoking principles and strategies, though they were written in 1910, are still very much applicable to this day. And probably more so.
I'm a firm believer in the idiom that you are what you think. And this book drives that point home. So I highly recommend that your read this book, which is brought to you free on this website.
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. A person can form things in his thought, and by impressing his thought upon formless substance can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.
Many people will scoff at the idea that there is an exact science of getting rich. Holding the impression that the supply of wealth is limited, they will insist that social and governmental institutions must be changed before even any considerable number of people can acquire a competence.
But this is not true.
It is true that existing governments keep the masses in poverty, but this is because the masses do not think and act in the certain way.
What I have said in the last chapter applies as well to the professional person and the wage-earner as to the person who is engaged in selling or any other form of business.
No matter whether you are a physician, a teacher, or a clergyman, if you can give increase of life to others and make them sensible of that fact, they will be attracted to you, and you will get rich. The physician who holds the vision of himself as a great and successful healer, and who works toward the complete realization of that vision with faith and purpose, as described in former chapters, will come into such close touch with the source of life that he will be phenomenally successful; patients will come to him in throngs.
To set about getting rich in a scientific way, you do not try to apply your will power to anything outside of yourself. You have no right to do so, anyway. It is wrong to apply your will to other men and women in order to get them to do what you wish done.
It is as flagrantly wrong to coerce people by mental power as it is to coerce them by physical power. If compelling people by physical force to do things for you reduces them to slavery, compelling them by mental means accomplishes exactly the same thing; the only difference is in methods. If taking things from people by physical force is robbery, them taking things by mental force is robbery also. There is no difference in principle.
There is a science of getting rich, and it is an exact science, like algebra or arithmetic. There are certain laws which govern the process of acquiring riches, and once these laws are learned and obeyed by anyone, that person will get rich with mathematical certainty.
The ownership of money and property comes as a result of doing things in a certain way, and those who do things in this certain way — whether on purpose or accidentally — get rich, while those who do not do things in this certain way — no matter how hard they work or how able they are — remain poor.
Whatever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich. No one can rise to his greatest possible height in talent or soul development unless he has plenty of money, for to unfold the soul and to develop talent he must have many things to use, and he cannot have these things unless he has money to buy them with.
A person develops in mind, soul, and body by making use of things, and society is so organized that man must have money in order to become the possessor of things. Therefore, the basis of all advancement must be the science of getting rich.