The Science of Getting Rich

This Adaptation of THE Science of Getting Rich for the 21st Century is for us and about us. Originally written by Wallace D. Wattles in 1910, this classic of prosperity literature has been rediscovered in recent decades and is now part of the public domain. While the timeless financial principles in this classic will transform our lives when we adopt them, certain aspects of the original manuscript* simply aren't a match for modern sensibilities. This Inclusive Edition is carefully edited to align with 21st century thought. Early readers of The Science of Getting Rich would understand that Wattles called his method of getting rich a "science". His contemporaries believed that the discoveries of science were infallible. Our great-great grandparents had no idea that our knowledge and understanding of our world is constantly changing as we build on the foundation of the past. The world-view of Newtonian physics, for example, has been superseded by quantum physics. This change is reflected in our Adaptation for modern readers. According to the science of Wattles' era, all things are formed of matter. At the ultimate level, everything is physical, reducible only to smaller and smaller particles of matter. Wattles believed what Newtonian physics proved: that all things that exist in our world are made up, at their most indivisible source, of matter, or what he called 'substance'. Substance, according to my contemporary dictionary (Funk & Wagnall, 1915) is "the material of which anything is made." Quantum physics, however, has since discovered that energy, not matter, underlies all material forms. I have therefore boldly substituted the word "Energy" for Wattles' "Substance" in this Adaptation for 21st Century readers. This Newtonian bias is just one of Wattle's prejudices. Writing with the cultural milieu of his century, he wrote almost exclusively for men and about men.** Gender bias, like Newtonian physics, has been superseded. This new, inclusive edition of the Science of Getting Rich is inclusive, not exclusive. While some aspects of Wattles' early 20th century mentality are anachronistic in this 21st Century, others are worth preserving. This edition is conservative in its approach to Wattles' literary style; the complexity of his sentences may slow down the eager reader, but there are hidden benefits to our understanding of his ideas as we grapple with language. Our modernized revision preserves the characteristic Wattles' writing style; I've kept his wealth of semi-colons; and his unexpected Capitalizations. And, I've conserved his inclination to start sentences with conjunctions. Another of Wattles' assumption was that all his readers would share a common ground of Christian belief, and would therefore be familiar with the Biblical stories he references. This edition preserves the stories, however, as they will be useful to some, if not all, modern readers. Likewise, Wattles uses a great number of names, words and terms, including the Christian "God", which taken as a whole convey his sense of a central idea. All of those names words and terms are preserved, with the single substitution of "Energy" for Wattles' "Substance". One final note: Many of us may find the ideas in this book familiar, even redundant. This is not surprising, for many of our best and most valuable teachers, coaches and trainers have already read and understood this Science of Getting Rich, and have applied it in their own lives and in their teachings. Wallace D Wattles himself wasn't the first to understand these principles. He was, however, the first to codify it into a simple and complete "scientific" system of thought and action. I trust that this 21st century edition of the Science of Getting Rich will inspire even more of us to study, embrace and realize these timeless principles.