Text of the meditation
There is no striking a cheap bargain with prosperity. As the bubble cannot endure, so the fraud cannot prosper. They make a feverish spurt in the acquiring of money, and then collapse. Nothing is ever gained, or ever can be gained, by fraud. It is only wrested for a time, to be returned again with heavy interest.
But fraud is not confined to the unscrupulous swindler. All who are getting, or trying to get, money without giving an equivalent are practising fraud, whether they know it or not. People who are anxiously scheming how to get money without working for it are frauds, and mentally they are closely allied to the thief and swindler, under whose influence they come, sooner or later, and who deprives them of their capital.
Prosperity must be purchased, not only with intelligent labour, but with moral force.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
