Wallance D. Wattles

When I say that you do not have to drive sharp bar­gains, I do not mean that you do not have to drive any bar­gains at all or that you are above the neces­sity for hav­ing any deal­ings with your fel­low men. I Mean that you will not need to deal with them unfairly. You do not have to get some­thing for noth­ing, but can give to every per­son more than you take from him.

You can­not give every­one more in cash mar­ket value than you take from him, but you can give him more in use value than the cash value of the thing you take from him. The paper, ink, and other mate­r­ial in this book may not be worth the money you pay for it, but if the ideas sug­gested by it bring you thou­sands of dol­lars, you have not been wronged by those who sold it to you. They have given you a great use value for a small cash value.

Let us sup­pose that I own a pic­ture by one of the great artists, which, in a devel­oped soci­ety, is worth thou­sands of dol­lars. I take it to Baf­fin Bay and by “sales­man­ship” induce a native dweller to give a bun­dle of furs worth $500 for it. I have really wronged him, for he has no use for the pic­ture. It has no use value to him; it will not add to his life.

But sup­pose I give him a gun worth $50 for his furs. Then he has made a good bar­gain. He has use for the gun. It will get him many more furs and much food; it will add to his life in every way. It will make him rich.

When you rise from the com­pet­i­tive to the cre­ative plane, you can scan your busi­ness trans­ac­tions very strictly, and if you are sell­ing any per­son any­thing which does not add more to his life than the thing he give you in exchange, you can afford to stop it. You do not have to beat any­body in busi­ness. And if you are in a busi­ness which does beat peo­ple, get out of it at once.

Give every­one more in use value than you take from him in cash value. Then you are adding to the life of the world by every busi­ness transaction.

If you have peo­ple work­ing for you, you must take from them more in cash value than you pay them in wages, but you can so orga­nize your busi­ness that it will be filled with the prin­ci­ple of advance­ment, and so that each employee who wishes to do so may advance a lit­tle every day.

You can make your busi­ness do for your employ­ees what this book is doing for you. You can so con­duct your busi­ness that it will be a sort of lad­der by which every employee who will take the trou­ble may climb to riches him­self. And given the oppor­tu­nity, if he will not do so, it is not your fault.

And finally, just because you are to cause the cre­ation of your riches from form­less sub­stance which per­me­ates all your envi­ron­ment, it does not fol­low that they are to take shape from the atmos­phere and come into being before your eyes.

If you want a sewing machine, for instance, I do not mean to tell you that you are to impress the thought of a sewing machine on think­ing sub­stance until the machine is formed with­out hands, in the room where you sit or else­where. But if you want a sewing machine, hold the men­tal image of it with the most pos­i­tive cer­tainty that it is being made or is on its way to you. After once form­ing the thought, have the most absolute and unques­tion­ing faith that the sewing machine is com­ing. Never think of it or speak of it in any other way than as being sure to arrive. Claim it as already yours.

It will be brought to you by the power of the supreme intel­li­gence, act­ing upon the minds of men. If you live in Maine, it may be that a per­son will be brought from Texas or Japan to engage in some trans­ac­tion which will result in your get­ting what you want.

If so, the whole mat­ter will be as much to that person’s advan­tage as it is to yours.

Do not for­get for a moment that the think­ing sub­stance is through all, in all, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with all, and can influ­ence all. The desire of think­ing sub­stance for fuller life and bet­ter liv­ing has caused the cre­ation of all the sewing machines already made, and it can cause the cre­ation of mil­lions more — and will, when­ever peo­ple set it in motion by desire and faith and by act­ing in a cer­tain way.

You can cer­tainly have a sewing machine in your house, and it is just as cer­tain that you can have any other thing or things which you want and which you will use for the advance­ment of your own life and the lives of others.

You need not hes­i­tate about ask­ing largely. “It is your Father’s plea­sure to give you the king­dom,” said Jesus.

Orig­i­nal sub­stance wants to live all that is pos­si­ble in you, and wants you to have all that you can use and will use for the liv­ing of the most abun­dant life.

If you fix upon your con­scious­ness the fact that your desire for the pos­ses­sion of riches is one with the desire of the supreme power for more com­plete expres­sion, your faith becomes invincible.

Once I saw a lit­tle boy sit­ting at a piano, vainly try­ing to bring har­mony out of the keys. I saw that he was grieved and pro­voked by his inabil­ity to play real music. I asked him the cause of his vex­a­tion, and he answered, “I can feel the music in me, but I can’t make my hands go right.” The music in him was the URGE of orig­i­nal sub­stance, con­tain­ing all the pos­si­bil­i­ties of all life. All that there is of music was seek­ing expres­sion through the child.

God, the one sub­stance, is try­ing to live and do and enjoy things through human­ity. He is say­ing “I want hands to build won­der­ful struc­tures, to play divine har­monies, to paint glo­ri­ous pic­tures. I want feet to run my errands, eyes to see my beau­ties, tongues to tell mighty truths and to sing mar­velous songs,” and so on.

All that there is of pos­si­bil­ity is seek­ing expres­sion through peo­ple. God wants those who can play music to have pianos and every other instru­ment and to have the means to cul­ti­vate their tal­ents to the fullest extent. He wants those who can appre­ci­ate beauty to be able to sur­round them­selves with beau­ti­ful things. He wants those who can dis­cern truth to have every oppor­tu­nity to travel and observe. He wants those who can appre­ci­ate dress to be beau­ti­fully clothed, and those who can appre­ci­ate good food to be lux­u­ri­ously fed.

He wants all these things because it is him­self that enjoys and appre­ci­ates them; they are his cre­ation. It is God who wants to play, and sing, and enjoy beauty, and pro­claim truth, and wear fine clothes, and eat good foods. “It is God that wor­keth in you to will and to do,” said the apos­tle Paul.

The desire you feel for riches is the infi­nite, seek­ing to express him­self in you as he sought to find expres­sion in the lit­tle boy at the piano.

So you need not hes­i­tate to ask largely.

Your part is to focus on and express that desire to God.

This is a dif­fi­cult point with most peo­ple. They retain some­thing of the old idea that poverty and self-​​sacrifice are pleas­ing to God. They look upon poverty as a part of the plan, a neces­sity of nature.

They have the idea that God has fin­ished his work, and made all that he can make, and that the major­ity of peo­ple must stay poor because there is not enough to go around. They hold to so much of this erro­neous thought that they feel ashamed to ask for wealth. They try not to want more than a very mod­est com­pe­tence, just enough to make them fairly comfortable.

I recall now the case of one stu­dent who was told that he must get in mind a clear pic­ture of the things he desired, so that the cre­ative thought of them might be impressed on form­less sub­stance. He was a very poor man, liv­ing in a rented house and hav­ing only what he earned from day to day, and he could not grasp the fact that all wealth was his. So, after think­ing the mat­ter over, he decided that he might rea­son­ably ask for a new rug for the floor of his best room and a coal stove to heat the house dur­ing the cold weather. Fol­low­ing the instruc­tions given in this book, he obtained these things in a few months.

And then it dawned upon him that he had not asked enough.

He went through the house in which he lived, and planned all the improve­ments he would like to make in it. He men­tally added a bay win­dow here and a room there until it was com­plete in his mind as his ideal home, and then he planned its furnishings.

Hold­ing the whole pic­ture in his mind, he began liv­ing in the cer­tain way and mov­ing toward what he wanted — and he owns the house now and is rebuild­ing it after the form of his men­tal image. And now, with still larger faith, he is going on to get greater things.

It has been unto him accord­ing to his faith, and so it is with you — and with all of us.



Science of Getting Rich Series Table of Contents