Figures · New Thought · Thinking Substance · Wealth

Wallace Wattles

1860 — 1911

The Science of Getting Rich — the most precise and least celebrated book in the New Thought tradition

Wallace D. Wattles spent most of his life in poverty and obscurity — a failed farmer, failed political candidate, and itinerant lecturer who studied the great metaphysical and philosophical systems of his time without ever finding financial success in them. Then, in the last years of his life, he wrote three slim, precise books that distilled everything he had learned. The Science of Getting Rich (1910) was one of them. Wattles died the following year. His daughter reported that he did, finally, begin to prosper in his final months — proof of concept, or coincidence, depending on your view.

The Core Idea

The Thinking Substance — How Wealth Is Created

Wattles's framework begins with a metaphysical claim: there exists a Thinking Substance that permeates and penetrates all things. This substance thinks, and every thought takes form in it. When a person holds a clear mental image of what they desire — with faith, gratitude, and purposeful action — they impress this image on the Thinking Substance, which then moves to manifest it in physical reality through the available channels of supply and circumstance.

This is New Thought metaphysics stated with unusual directness. Wattles does not hedge or qualify — he presents the system as a science, with laws as reliable as gravity, and argues that poverty is not virtue but waste, and that any person who applies the system correctly will become wealthy. His confidence borders on the absolute, which is simultaneously the book's greatest strength and its most significant limitation.

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.

— Wallace Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich

The Certain Way

Wattles insists throughout that there is a "certain way" of thinking and acting that reliably produces wealth — and that this way is available to anyone regardless of circumstance, talent, or starting position. The certain way requires: a clear mental image of the desired goal, held with unshaken faith; gratitude for everything already received; and purposeful action on every opportunity that presents itself.

Gratitude as Technology

Wattles places unusual emphasis on gratitude — not as a feel-good practice but as a technical requirement. Gratitude, he argues, keeps the mind in close connection with the creative intelligence of the universe. A grateful mind is a receptive mind; a resentful or complaining mind cuts itself off from the flow of supply. This framing of gratitude as a practical tool rather than a virtue reappears throughout subsequent manifestation teaching.

The Competitive vs Creative Plane

One of Wattles's most useful distinctions: the competitive plane, where wealth comes at others' expense, versus the creative plane, where wealth is created from the Thinking Substance and genuinely adds to the world's total. He argues that operating on the creative plane — giving more in use value than you take in cash value — is not only more ethical but more effective, because it aligns the individual with the creative intelligence rather than opposing it.

The Influence on The Secret

Rhonda Byrne has stated that reading The Science of Getting Rich was the direct inspiration for creating The Secret (2006). Byrne gave copies of the book to everyone working on the film. The Secret is, in many ways, a popularisation and dramatisation of Wattles's core ideas — with the added testimonials, the celebrity endorsements, and the removal of the action requirement that Wattles considered essential. Whether this was an improvement is debatable.

Assessment

A Life That Proved and Questioned the System

Wattles's life is a useful test case for his own system. He spent decades studying and applying New Thought principles without achieving the wealth he wrote about — which either means the principles don't work, that he wasn't applying them correctly until the end, or that external circumstances (poverty, limited opportunity, the historical period) created obstacles the mental system alone could not overcome. Wattles himself would say it was the second option; critics would say it's the third.

The Science of Getting Rich is, regardless of its metaphysical claims, one of the most precisely written books in the New Thought tradition. Its argument is clear, its principles are specific, and its insistence on action alongside mental work distinguishes it from the more passive manifestation teaching that followed. Even a reader who rejects the Thinking Substance metaphysics will find practical value in the emphasis on clear goals, gratitude, creative rather than competitive thinking, and giving genuine value in exchange for what is received.