1. No person is kept poor because opportunity has been taken away from him or her -- because other people have monopolized the wealth, or put a fence around it. I may be shut off from engaging in business in certain lines, but there are other channels open to me.

2. At different periods the tide of opportunity sets in different directions, according to the needs of the whole, and the particular stage of social evolution which has been reached. There is abundance of opportunity for the person who will go with the tide, instead of trying to swim against it.

3. Workers, either as individuals or as a class, are not deprived of opportunity. The workers are not being "kept down" by their masters; they are not being "ground" (kept from opportunity as a punishment) by the trusts and big business. As a class, they are where they are because they do not do things in a certain way.

4. The working class may become the master class whenever they will begin to do things in a certain way. The law of wealth is the same for them as it is for all others. This they must learn. They will remain where they are as long as they continue to do as they do. The individual worker is not held down by an entire class's ignorance of these laws; anybody can follow the tide of opportunity to riches, and this book will tell how.

5. No one is kept in poverty by a shortness in the supply of riches; there is more than enough for all.

6. A palace as large as the capitol at Washington might be built for every family on earth from the building material in the United States alone, and under intensive cultivation this country would produce wool, cotton, linen, and silk enough to clothe each person in the world finer than King Solomon (often referred to in the Bible as the richest person on Earth at that time) was arrayed in all his glory, together with food enough to feed them all luxuriously.

7. The visible supply is practically inexhaustible, and the invisible supply really is inexhaustible.

8. Everything seen on earth is made from one original substance, out of which all things proceed. New forms are constantly being made, and older ones are dissolving, but all are shapes assumed by one thing.

9. There is no limit to the supply of formless stuff, or original substance. The universe is made out of it, but it was not all used in making the universe. The spaces in, through, and between the forms of the visible universe are permeated and filled with the original substance, with the formless stuff - with the raw material of all things. Ten thousand times as much as has been made might still be made, and even then we should not have exhausted the supply of universal raw material.

10. No one, therefore, is poor because nature is poor, or because there is not enough to go around.

11. Nature is an inexhaustible storehouse of riches; the supply will never run short. Original substance is alive with creative energy, and is constantly producing more forms. When the supply of building material is exhausted, more will be produced. When the soil is exhausted so that food stuffs and materials for clothing will no longer grow upon it, it will be renewed or more soil will be made. When all the gold and silver has been dug from the earth, if humanity is still in such a stage of social development that it needs gold and silver, more will be produced from the formless energy. The formless stuff responds to the needs of humankind; it will not let the world be without any good thing.

12. This is true of humankind collectively. The race as a whole is always abundantly rich, and if individuals are poor it is because they do not follow the certain way of doing things which makes the individual rich.

13. The formless stuff is intelligent; it is stuff which thinks. It is alive and is always impelled toward more life.

14. It is the natural and inherent impulse of life to seek to live more; it is the nature of intelligence to enlarge itself, and of consciousness to seek to extend its boundaries and find fuller expression. The universe of forms has been made by formless living substance throwing itself into form in order to express itself more fully.

15. The universe is a great living presence, always moving inherently toward more life and fuller functioning.

16. Nature is formed for the advancement of life, and its impelling motive is the increase of life.

17. Because of this, everything which can possibly minister to life is bountifully provided. There can be no lack unless God is to contradict himself and nullify his own works.

18. Nobody is kept poor by lack in the supply of riches. It is a fact which Mr. Wattles shall demonstrate a little farther on that even the resources of the formless supply are at the command of any individual who will act and think in a certain way.

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