Excerpts from
HOW TO MAKE MONEY
The Laws of Financial Success
by B.F. Austin
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Description
This very hard to find book from 1913 comprises
of Three
Lesson Lectures Containing "The Kernel" of all NewThought Teaching
on MONEY MAKING. If your pressing need is to demonstrate a greater flow
of money into your life then this is the book for you.
"...no one can apply the teachings
of
these
lessons without his life becoming larger, nobler and purer, and more
enjoyable
in the possession of mental and material wealth. And the life that
receives and
applies these teachings will be like a fertilizing stream in the
desert, making
it bud and blossom like the rose."
PURPOSE OF
THE LESSONS
The purpose of these lessons is to raise the
mental
and spiritual vibrations of the student—to inspire hope, faith,
courage—to
awaken larger thought within the mind, inspire greater plans and
purposes and
awaken the dormant energy in the life—to fire the enthusiasm and call
into
active service hidden talent which the student, possibly, does not
dream at his
present stage of unfoldment, he possesses.
In short our purpose is to awaken men from
mental
slumber, show the unlimited resources in human nature, the unseen yet
open
doors to mental wealth first, then as a natural sequence to wealth in
material
conditions, and thus enlarge and ennoble the life as well as add to its
material expressions.
The purpose of the true teacher—who is ever
the true
physician as well—must always be the "more abundant life" of which
the Nazarene spoke and taught. To disclose that life, abounding life,
in all
its fullness and beauty and point out the laws by which it is gained,
with
wealth as a natural sequence, is the purpose of the three lessons on
which we
are entering.
A PROPHECY
OF RESULTS FROM THESE LESSONS
Prophecies based on observation and
experience, and
knowledge of natural law, are exceedingly instructive and valuable. We
predict
most confidently that every student of these lessons will have after
reading
them—and especially after their re-reading and study—a larger store of
information on the subject of Success in
Life, brighter hopes, more enthusiasm, more "vim,"
"grit" and "gumption" in business, and will attack his life
work with such enlarged wisdom and such intense energy that hereafter
his life
will become in every way more successful and bring him into larger
freedom,
greater happiness and power and ampler resources financially.
In short, no one can apply the teachings of
these
lessons without his life becoming larger, nobler and purer, and more
enjoyable
in the possession of mental and material wealth. And the life that
receives and
applies these teachings will be like a fertilizing stream in the
desert, making
it bud and blossom like the rose.
THE REASONS FOR THIS PROPHECY
With absolute confidence I make this
prophecy, because
I shall give you not theories, spun from the imagination of the poet or
novelist or from some dreamy philosopher in the seclusion of his study,
or some
penny-a-liner who is paid so much per page for his theories, but the actual results of human experience and a
study of nature's laws and especially of the laws of financial gain.
I
shall give you "the kernel" of the best teachings of a score of our
ablest psychologists and new thought writers in concentrated form. And
I shall
give the personal testimony of those who have risen from poverty to
wealth
through discovery of the laws of financial success and their
application to the
life. The principles here laid down have been tested over and over
again in the
laboratory of life's experiences and found correct and practicable.
Moreover I myself have proved them and I
illustrate
these principles and prove their value in my own life.
Another reason why we most confidently
predict success
to the students of this course is the fact that the teachings are
rational,
being in accord with life and human experience, and based on laws that
are now
known and recognized as governing the accumulation of wealth. These is
nothing
of mystical charm, no miracle involved, nothing of the "cheap
nostrum" order about them. Our method is simply reason amplified and
set
to work, energy awakened and employed, laws discovered and followed
out—with
the one inevitable result: enlarged and ennobled character, mental and
material
wealth.
NO
SPECIAL ENDOWMENT REQUIRED
FOR MONEY-MAKING
The way to competence, if not wealth, is open
to every
man of sound body and mind who will study and apply these laws. The
fact that
great riches belong to the few, and that some men seem to stumble on
riches and
others seek them in vain for a life time—generally without knowledge of
the law
or application in the life —has led some to suppose that a special
endowment of
nature is necessary to enable one to attain wealth. Doubtless a few men
without
a theoretical knowledge of the law have applied it in their lives, and
unquestionably some few men seem to come into wealth by "chance" or
"luck," yet there is really no such thing as chance in a universe of
law—and the vast majority of men who have won wealth have either
through their
own mentality, or by the teachings of others, or by inspiration, come
to know
the law and apply it in their own lives.
Every man of sound mind and body, we repeat,
can
become master of conditions in his life—in place of being enslaved, as
the
multitudes are, by these conditions. There is a pathway from poverty to
wealth, from obscurity to fame, from weakness to strength, from the
servile and
pigmy condition of mind and life, to Kingship in mind and in estate.
The door
of opportunity is open—or, at least, unlocked.
NATURE PLANS ABUNDANCE FOR ALL
Another introductory consideration worthy our
attention is the fact that the evident plan of God as revealed in
nature is
abundance for all. Poverty is no part of nature's plan—but the very
reverse is
true: Nature designed abundance for all. Her provision for man's wants
covers
not only his necessities but a super abundance is the law of Nature's
beneficence. The tracing of disease, poverty and suffering to the
design of God
was, indeed, a part of the Old Theology, which is now practically dead
and superseded
by the New Theology which traces all of these evils to ignorance and
neglect of
law.
As children of God we inherit not only the
right to
life, but to all that makes life worth living. But every life is
"cabin'd,
cribbed, confined" by poverty. In fact freedom, power, happiness,
education,
culture, travel, books, art, music, recreation—the things that made
life worth
the living—are really impossible without wealth.
Not only is our own life robbed of its full
and happy
expression by poverty, but man's service of his fellowmen is limited on
every
hand by poverty. Men who possess in their own mentality great truths
that would
instruct and inspire the multitude, or great plans for reforming our
deplorable
social and economic system, or great purposes of charity toward the
needy, or great reforms they would like to
see
realized, find themselves hampered and hindered in all their noble work
by
"lack of funds."
The world—sad to state—estimates a man not by
his
knowledge, or his character, so much as by the size of his bank
account. A
public lecturer said recently in my hearing—and was applauded in saying
it—he
respected no man who did not have a good bank account.
Harsh as this may appear, we shall show there
is at
least a small measure of justice in it by pointing out that Poverty
is essentially a Mental Disease,
and that from the standpoint of character itself—in this age of golden
opportunities—it is no credit to a man to be poor.
OUR DESIRES ARE PROPHECIES AND SHOW THE
POSSIBILITY OF
WEALTH
All students of nature and of man recognize
that the
possession of a desire within the soul for any real or supposed good,
is a
natural prophecy proving there is somewhere in Nature's realm a source
of
satisfaction for that desire. If my student, then, believes in a
Personal God
as the designer of all things, can he possibly conclude that God
intended to
mock us by desires impossible of fulfillment? If so, as Helen Wilmans
aptly declares,
these desires implanted within us are simply "promissory notes on a
ruined
bank." Again, if these desires for wealth are not true prophecies, man
is
destined as he emerges from barbarism to civilization, to increasing
misery and
suffering, since desires multiply and intensify as man advances along
the
upward path of evolution. All studies, therefore, of nature and the
human soul
tend to convince us that man's life should have an abundance of
temporal good—in
short that man should rule his conditions and not be ruled by them. We
go still
farther and unhesitatingly assert it is.
EVERY MAN'S DUTY TO MAKE ALL THE MONEY HE CAN
HONESTLY
At first sight it might seem that inheritors
of great
wealth—having no need of more money and no love of business or
labor—might be excused
from the task of money making. Not so, however. Every man who enjoys
the
advantages of our wonderful civilization, who eats the food some toiler
has
grown, or wears the garments some toiler has made, who enjoys the
protection
which is freely granted to all, owes a personal debt to the world.
Despite his
large bank account and broad acres he is but a refined "pauper" if in
some way he does not add to the wealth of the world.
And no man has enough wealth to supply, not
only his
own need, but to fully meet the claims of a world in sickness,
suffering and
sorrow, and to plan and prosecute the great living reforms of this age.
A man should demand of himself, of society,
of his
God, abundance of temporal good. The stream of abundance should flow
with
increasing volume into his life, and the stream of beneficence should
flow with
equal freedom out of his heart and life, to supply the higher needs of
humanity. "Freely receive; freely give." The ideal life is the one in
which a liberal kingly income is assured—and man in the royalty and
beneficence
of his nature should give like a king.
No life can reach its maximum of enjoyment,
power and
usefulness without wealth.
IS THERE GREAT DANGER IN ACQUIRING WEALTH?
Undoubtedly—but greater dangers still in the
lack of
wealth. The one great danger in acquiring money and in possessing it,
is the
danger of becoming a slave to gold. This is one of the vilest forms of
slavery
and, perhaps, no other form of idolatry is quite so benumbing to all
the higher
and diviner qualities of manhood as avarice. The miser is of all
characters
most despised and illustrates the truth of the old proverb "Money is a
good servant but a hard master." No other type of character exhibits
such
unreasoning folly and seems so fully to merit the rebuke: "Thou
Fool." The one safeguard in the acquisition of wealth is the constant,
unremitting cultivation of the human sympathies and the exercise of
benevolence.
Without this, the acquisition of money is generally attended by a
freezing up
of the moral nature and a growing love for money for purely selfish
purposes,
or for money's sake, ending in avarice and the wretched condition of
the miser.
It is quite easy to see how the rigid economy many feel called upon to
exercise
in rising from poverty to wealth, and the constant mental habit of
reaching out
in desire and act for material gain, would in the lapse of years work a
transformation of character, so that men who set out in life with an
ambition
to acquire a fortune for the uplift of humanity, find with the gaining
of the
fortune they have lost all benevolent desire. This is an unspeakable
calamity
to multitudes of men who become enslaved not by money, but by the love
of
money, and miss the grandest opportunity of a life dowered with the
possession
of money—the privilege of using wealth to enrich themselves and their
fellows
with that increasing knowledge, happiness and virtue, that constitute
the
eternal riches of the soul.
Better a thousandfold for a man that he live
and die
under the disadvantages and limitations and hardships of poverty and
retain
the spirit of brotherhood and humanity in his heart, than to acquire
the wealth
of Croesus and shrink his soul up to the littleness, meanness and
wretchedness
of a miser.
A very good test of our own soul attitude
toward
money, a very fair indication of how we would use great wealth if it
came to
us, may be had in the serious answer of the question: How are we using
the
measure of wealth which is ours today? How much have we contributed to
purely
benevolent objects this past year?
A man should ever recognize his own kingship
and
demand a liberal income from the world, and it is his business to see
to it
that all obstacles in himself and his environment are removed which
would
hinder a generous flow of Nature's great stream of Opulence toward
himself. And
then he should live like a king, and be as generous as a king, with his
fellowmen.
WE SEEK TO INTENSIFY YOUR DESIRES FOR WEALTH
In place of encouraging contentment with
Poverty, we
preach the Gospel of Discontent. We would whet your desires for wealth
and
intensify your love—not of money—but of the good things in life which
money
represents. It is a misinterpretation of life and of all true religion
to deny
either the vast advantages of money on the one hand, or the right and
duty of
all men to possess and use it in as large a degree as is consistent
with honor
and justice. The inherent desires of men, the demands of the world
today upon
us in our complex civilization, the Law of Opulence everywhere seen in
Nature,
all prove that men ought to conquer conditions and amass wealth.
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