'Looking backward over the space of nearly sixty years, and reconstructing in my memory the thoughts and incidents of my boyhood from the age of ten until I was well advanced into my 'teens', I can now see that I was always a seeker after a something but dimly defined in my mind but which represented a distinct 'want' of my nature. That something so early sought after may be said to have been of the nature of an 'Inner Secret' of successful achievement and personal power. just why I should have come to the conclusion that there really existed an Inner Secret of Success and Personal Power-a something which when once known enabled one to achieve successful results in whatever was undertaken by him-I do not know. Perhaps it was the manifestation of an intuition; perhaps it was the result of a suggestion which I had absorbed from reading. At any rate I now see that the idea had become fixed in my consciousness, and that it colored all my youthful thought.' - THE QUEST, The Inner Secret William Walker Atkinson (1862-1932) was a prolific writer. His works treat themes related to the mental world, occultism, divination, psychic reality, and mankind's nature. They constitute a basis for what Atkinson called 'New Psychology' or 'New Thought'.