I just read The Science of Being Great by Wallace D. Wattles. Published in 1911, the year of his death, this is the third book in the series after The Science of Getting Rich and The Science of Being Well. It’s been added to the Resources page.
Wattles believed that everyone has the ability to attain greatness. He wrote:
“Nothing was ever in any man that is not in you; no man ever had more spiritual or mental power than you can attain, or did greater things than you can accomplish. You can become what you want to be.”
Sounds promising, but what’s the secret? He tells us this:
“The Principle of Power in man is man himself, and man himself is God. But while man is original substance, and has within him all power and possibilities, his consciousness is limited. He does not know all there is to know, and so he is liable to error and mistake. To save himself from these he must unite his mind to that outside him which does know all; he must become consciously one with God.”
So now you see that compared to the previous two books, this one is much more religious (or sacrilegious, depending on your point of view). The law of attraction is downplayed in favor of emphasis on God. This book is also unusual in that it’s not nearly as easy to read as the other two. However, it’s still very good.
Note that this particular copy of the ebook contains an advertising link at the top of each page. I’m not affiliated with this link, I haven’t researched it, and I have no recommendation either for or against it.
Please share your thoughts on The Science of Being Great in the comments.
It sounds like even back then they knew about the power of bringing out a series of books on a similar topic then Hunter.
Talking of the Science of Growing Rich, I read an interesting post the other day that said Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill was actually written by his wife!
That explains a lot. Even now, some people will only buy a book if they think it was written by a man. Look at Joanna Rowling – that’s why she chose to have JK Rowling on her book covers instead.
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Catherine, do you remember where you saw that post about Think and Grow Rich? I did a search but didn’t find anything about that. I did see that he had three wives though, so which wife are we talking about?
I didn’t know J. K. Rowling was trying to hide her gender…if anything, I would have thought that being a woman would help her sell children’s books. But it turns out that the K is just a made up initial since she has no middle name.
Hi Hunter,
Another great “book” has been added to your list of resources. Your blog is slowly becoming a great “library” of sorts.
I like how he says: “You can become what you want to be.” That’s a pretty powerful statement, but many don’t know what they “want to be”, so they spend their lives going in circles, chasing an elusive dream, Sad!
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Thanks, Barbara. And this library doesn’t require any taxpayer money, it never closes, and there are no fines!
It’s true, most people don’t know what they want to be, only what they don’t want to be. So they spend their time complaining about where they are instead of working towards where they want to be.
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