Wallace Wattles

Wallace Wattles is one of the most important historical authorities invoked by The Secret. Although he belongs to an earlier generation rather than appearing as a contemporary participant, his writing is treated as a living source: it gives the book a prosperity tradition, a discipline of gratitude, and a practical account of how attention and feeling are supposed to shape experience.

Identity and Background

Wallace Wattles was American-born and lived from 1860 to 1911. The biographical account says that he spent many years studying different religions and philosophies before writing about the practice of New Thought principles. His significance therefore rests not on a single isolated claim, but on a long period of comparative study transformed into a practical teaching about prosperity and success.

His most famous work is The Science of Getting Rich, published in 1910, one year before his death. The book is described as a prosperity classic and as a work that exerted a significant influence on contemporary prosperity and success teachers. In the narrative of The Secret, that historical influence makes Wattles a bridge between older philosophical and religious traditions and the modern teachers who present the law of attraction to a mass audience.

Influence on The Secret

Wattles is included among the past masters whose writings, in the words of the book's acknowledgments, lit a burning desire in Rhonda Byrne and helped her trace the Secret across the centuries. His presence among the honored teachers places him inside the book's chosen lineage of inherited wisdom. The Secret does not present its central doctrine as a recent discovery; it argues that the law of attraction has been recognized by great teachers throughout history, and Wattles is one of the clearest modern precursors supplied for that claim.

The book also connects Wattles to a wider historical chorus. It says that the law of attraction was expressed by poets, musicians, artists, philosophers, religions, and ancient civilizations, and that the principle was recorded in stone as early as 3000 BC. Against this expansive background, Wattles serves a particular function: he turns a broad metaphysical idea into a direct prosperity practice. His work helps the book move from claims about an ancient universal law to instructions about money, food, bodily attention, and daily conduct.

Teachings on Attention and Presence

One of Wattles's most concrete contributions concerns eating. He recommends that a person remain entirely focused on chewing food, keeping the mind present in the body rather than allowing attention to drift. The experience is described in sensory terms: when attention stays with chewing, the flavor becomes intense and magnificent; when the mind wanders, the flavor virtually disappears. The exercise is consequently more than a rule about nutrition. It becomes a demonstration of the book's larger conviction that attention changes the quality of experience.

The Secret extends Wattles's suggestion beyond taste. It presents complete presence during eating as a way of allowing food to be assimilated perfectly and of directing the body toward perfection. This extension is characteristic of the book's use of Wattles: a small, practical act becomes evidence for a general law of mind, frequency, and bodily result. The instruction also contrasts deliberate attention with mental absence. A person who lets the mind drift is not simply distracted; within the book's framework, that person is failing to participate consciously in the creative process.

Gratitude and Prosperity

Gratitude is Wattles's most sustained influence on the book. The Secret identifies gratitude as a fundamental element in the teachings of the great avatars and notes that gratitude occupies the longest chapter of The Science of Getting Rich. This detail gives Wattles's work unusual structural authority: gratitude is not treated as a decorative sentiment, but as the central practice of a major prosperity text.

The book quotes Wattles as saying, “If it is a new thought to you that gratitude brings your whole mind into closer harmony with the creative energies of the Universe, consider it well, and you will see that it is true.” In this formulation, gratitude is both mental alignment and practical method. It brings the mind into harmony with creative energies, making prosperity dependent not merely on wanting more but on changing the emotional relation to what already exists.

Wattles also warns that many people who otherwise order their lives properly remain in poverty because they lack gratitude. The warning gives poverty a specifically psychological and spiritual explanation within The Secret's system. Ungratefulness is described as a blockage: jealousy, resentment, dissatisfaction, and the feeling of not having enough emit negative emotions that can attract more of what is unwanted. A person who wants a new car but feels no gratitude for the existing car is said to remain fixed in the frequency of lack rather than moving toward the desired condition.

The same principle is expressed in Wattles's statement that “The daily practice of gratitude is one of the conduits by which your wealth will come to you.” The metaphor of a conduit turns gratitude into a channel through which wealth can arrive. The Secret adopts this idea as one of its strongest practical conclusions, urging readers to begin with whatever is already available, including the eyes with which they read or the clothes they possess. Gratitude is thus framed as cumulative: once a person starts naming existing blessings, further objects of gratitude appear, and the resulting emotional frequency is expected to attract more of the same.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

Wattles functions as a mentor from the past whose authority is transmitted through a book rather than through direct personal contact. His work is repeatedly brought forward to validate the modern program of asking, believing, receiving, visualizing, and feeling good. The historical distance matters: because he studied religions and philosophies and wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century, his teachings allow The Secret to present its message as both old and newly recoverable.

His role also reveals the book's characteristic method of legitimization. Modern teachers, health explanations, personal testimonies, and references to science are placed beside inherited writings. Wattles supplies the prosperity strand of that composite authority, while the larger movement of The Secret turns his ideas into a repeatable daily routine. The result is a transformation from author to tradition-bearer: his books are not merely cited as historical documents, but used as instructions for changing attention, emotion, and expectations.

For that reason, Wallace Wattles remains central even though his life is only briefly sketched. The decisive image attached to him is not a dramatic biography but a chain of practices: study, focused presence, gratitude, and wealth. Through those practices, The Secret makes his 1910 prosperity teaching speak to a modern audience and treats gratitude as the most reliable way to convert an abstract law of attraction into everyday behavior.