Little is known about Wattles' life. He was born in the USA shortly before the civil war, and experienced much failure in his earlier years. Later in life he took to studying the various religious beliefs and philosophies of the world including those of Descartes, Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Swedenborg, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others. It was through his tireless study and experimentation that he discovered the truth of New Thought principles and put them into practice in his own life. He began to write books outlining these principles. He practiced the technique of creative visualisation and as his daughter Florence relates, "He wrote almost constantly. It was then that he formed his mental picture. He himself "tested" this out on himself, as he lived most of his life in poverty, but in his later years he became rich. There is a free download for this book on wikisource http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Getting_Rich IN print book you can look at http://www.lulu.com/content/686330