1860–1911 — Teacher of the creative, not competitive, mind
Wattles wrote a short, blunt book in 1910 about prosperity and then died a year later, largely unknown. A century on it is one of the most-read New Thought texts in existence, mostly because of one distinction it makes.
Wattles was an American writer with a hard early life: poor, largely self-educated, active in Christian socialist politics, and by his daughter's account frequently in financial trouble before he began writing the material he is now known for.
He published three short books in quick succession — The Science of Getting Rich (1910), The Science of Being Well and The Science of Being Great — and died in 1911. He had almost no readership in his lifetime.
The revival came much later, when the 1910 text was rediscovered and circulated widely online, and then cited as the seed of a wave of popular prosperity writing.
Wattles opens from a metaphysical premise — that there is one thinking substance from which all things are formed, and that a thought impressed on it tends to produce the thing thought of.
But the part of the book that has lasted is ethical rather than metaphysical. He draws a line between the competitive mind, which assumes there is a limited supply and that your gain must be someone else's loss, and the creative mind, which sets out to bring new value into existence. Almost every practical instruction in the book enforces that line.
Wattles overclaims. He calls his method a science and states it with a certainty the evidence does not carry, and his chapter titles promise more than any book can deliver.
What survives that is the working ethic: produce more than you extract, act where you stand, and refuse to treat prosperity as a contest. That part is worth having on its own terms whatever you make of the metaphysics.
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.
The Science of Getting Rich, 1910
He must live and act in a Certain Way.
The Science of Getting Rich, 1910
That prosperity follows from acting in what Wattles calls a Certain Way: holding a clear mental image with gratitude, giving every person more in use value than you take in cash value, and refusing the competitive assumption that your gain must be someone else's loss.
Yes. It was published in the United States in 1910 and its copyright has long expired. The complete text is free to read in our Source Archive.
The competitive mind assumes a fixed supply and treats prosperity as something taken from others. The creative mind sets out to bring something new into existence. Wattles treats the second as both the more effective and the only legitimate approach.
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