Who Was Wallace Wattles? The Father of the Certain Way

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Wallace Wattles is the New Thought writer behind The Science of Getting Rich, the 1910 book that introduced the idea that wealth follows specific, learnable principles rather than luck or circumstance. This guide covers who Wallace Wattles was, what he taught, and why his short, direct book has remained in print for well over a century.

Who Was Wallace Wattles

Wallace Delois Wattles was born in 1860 and spent much of his early life dealing with repeated setbacks, financial struggle, and personal failure. By his own account, nothing about his early circumstances suggested he was headed toward wealth or recognition. A turning point came around 1896, when he encountered a Christian socialist meeting that introduced him to ideas that would shape the rest of his thinking and writing.

Wallace Wattles spent years studying philosophy and New Thought principles, drawing particularly on the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ralph Waldo Emerson, before formulating the ideas that became The Science of Getting Rich. He remains a relatively obscure figure personally, with most of what’s known about his life coming from a letter his daughter Florence wrote and published shortly after his death.

This obscurity is itself notable given how widely his work is now read. Unlike many of his New Thought contemporaries, Wattles left behind little in the way of personal correspondence, interviews, or biographical detail, meaning most portraits of the man have to be assembled from a small handful of secondary sources rather than his own direct testimony.

The Science of Getting Rich

Wallace Wattles published The Science of Getting Rich in 1910, just one day before his death. The book is short and direct, divided into seventeen brief chapters that lay out his central argument: wealth follows specific, learnable principles with the same reliability as any other exact science, rather than depending on chance, competition, or circumstance.

The book covers topics ranging from the right to be rich and the nature of opportunity to gratitude, right action, and what Wallace Wattles called thinking and acting in the Certain Way. Its brevity and directness are part of why it has remained so widely read — readers can move through the entire book in a single sitting while still getting Wattles’ complete argument.

What Wallace Wattles Actually Taught

At the center of Wallace Wattles’ teaching is the idea that there is a specific, exact science behind acquiring wealth, and that anyone who learns and consistently follows its principles will become wealthy with the same mathematical certainty that governs arithmetic. This was a striking claim for its time, presenting wealth creation not as a matter of luck, hard work alone, or moral virtue, but as a teachable and repeatable process.

Central to this teaching is what Wallace Wattles called thinking in the Certain Way — holding a clear, consistent mental picture of what a person wants, backed by unwavering faith and gratitude, rather than shifting between doubt and desire. He paired this inner practice with acting in the Certain Way, insisting that right thought must be joined with efficient, purposeful action in a person’s current circumstances rather than waiting passively for wealth to appear.

Wattles also placed real emphasis on what he called increasing life — the idea that all things, including people, carry a natural drive toward fuller and more complete expression. In his framework, the desire for wealth is ultimately an expression of this broader drive, not simple greed or vanity, which gives his teaching a somewhat different tone than a purely transactional wealth guide.

Wallace Wattles and the New Thought Movement

Wallace Wattles wrote during the height of the American New Thought movement, and his work is often described as belonging to Mental Science or Mind Science, philosophical currents that may have preceded and helped shape the broader New Thought tradition that followed. He published much of his writing through Elizabeth Towne’s magazine The Nautilus, which featured his work regularly during the early 1900s.

Wallace Wattles wrote several other books during his lifetime, including The Science of Being Well and The Science of Being Great, both applying the same Certain Way framework to health and personal greatness rather than wealth specifically. None achieved the lasting recognition of The Science of Getting Rich, which remains by far his most influential and widely read work.

Positioned within the wider movement, Wattles is often described as more philosophically direct than some of his contemporaries, favoring plain declarative argument over the more devotional or affirmation-heavy style found in other New Thought writing of the same period.

Wallace Wattles’ Writing Style

One of the more distinctive qualities of Wallace Wattles’ work is its plain, declarative prose. Where much personal development and New Thought writing of his era leaned toward flowery or devotional language, Wattles wrote in short, direct sentences that stated his claims outright rather than building toward them gradually through extended illustration or anecdote.

This directness extends to how Wallace Wattles structured his arguments. Rather than assuming a reader would arrive at his conclusions through inference or reflection, he stated his central claims early and clearly, then spent the remainder of each chapter building the specific reasoning and instruction that supported them. This approach gives his books an unusually accessible entry point compared to some of the denser philosophical writing found elsewhere in the New Thought tradition.

Wattles’ background likely contributed to this style. Having spent years in genuine financial hardship before formulating his ideas, he seems to have had little patience for vague or ornamental language when it came to describing what he believed actually worked. His writing reads less like philosophical exploration and more like a practical manual, even when addressing genuinely abstract concepts like the nature of Universal Substance or the relationship between thought and material form.

This stylistic choice has aged well. Modern readers often find Wallace Wattles considerably easier to approach than many of his contemporaries, since his sentences require less unpacking and his central arguments are rarely buried in extended metaphor or lengthy scriptural interpretation. This accessibility is a meaningful part of why his short books have remained continuously available more than a century after their original publication, even as denser texts from the same era have fallen out of print or retreated to a smaller, more specialized readership.

At the same time, this directness occasionally reads as more absolute or certain than contemporary readers are accustomed to. Wallace Wattles rarely hedges his claims or acknowledges uncertainty, presenting his conclusions with the same confidence throughout each of his books. Readers approaching his work for the first time should expect this tone as a feature of the era’s writing conventions rather than a reflection of the underlying ideas’ actual complexity or nuance.

Wallace Wattles’ Lasting Influence

Much of Wallace Wattles’ modern recognition comes from how frequently his ideas resurface in later personal development and wealth-focused writing. The Science of Getting Rich has continued finding new readers well beyond its original early twentieth-century audience, and its central premise — that wealth results from applying specific, consistent principles — remains one of the clearest and most frequently cited articulations of that idea in the entire New Thought tradition.

This continued relevance has kept The Science of Getting Rich in ongoing print and made Wallace Wattles one of the more recognizable names among early New Thought writers, despite how little is actually known about his personal life.

His influence also extends into how later writers have structured their own wealth and success teaching. The clear separation between inner practice and outer action that Wattles established has become something of a template, echoed in various forms across a century of subsequent personal development writing, even when those later authors don’t credit him directly.

Why Wallace Wattles Still Matters

Wallace Wattles matters today because his central argument is direct, practical, and easy to apply without requiring extensive background in philosophy or metaphysics. Readers do not need to work through dense theoretical argument before arriving at something usable, which sets his short book apart from denser texts elsewhere in the New Thought tradition.

His insistence on pairing inner conviction with efficient outer action also distinguishes Wallace Wattles from teachers who emphasized belief or thought alone. This combination of clear inner practice and practical action has helped his teaching remain relevant across more than a century of changing economic circumstances. For a closer look at how well his ideas hold up today, see Is The Science of Getting Rich Still Relevant.

Frequently Asked Questions About Wallace Wattles

Who was Wallace Wattles

Wallace Wattles was an American New Thought writer, born in 1860 and best known for his 1910 book The Science of Getting Rich, which teaches that wealth follows specific, learnable principles.

What is Wallace Wattles’ most famous book

The Science of Getting Rich, published in 1910, is by far his most famous and influential work.

What other books did Wallace Wattles write

Beyond The Science of Getting Rich, Wallace Wattles wrote The Science of Being Well and The Science of Being Great, applying the same Certain Way framework to health and personal purpose.

Is Wallace Wattles’ work still relevant today

Yes. His direct, practical approach to combining inner conviction with efficient action has kept The Science of Getting Rich in continuous print more than a century after its original publication.