One of the most popular Jesuit writers of all time is a man whom the Jesuits don’t talk about very much. You won’t see his books on sale in retreat houses. No residence halls at Jesuit universities are named after him. He is Baltasar Gracián, a Spanish philosopher and moralist who died in 1657. He’s known for his little book The Pocket Oracle, an astute, witty, highly quotable guide to winning friends and influencing people. An English translation of The Pocket Oracle titled The Art of Worldly Wisdom has sold more than 200,00 copies since 1992.
The book is a collection of 300 aphorisms about how to deal with people and how to present yourself in the best possible way. Gracián is perceptive about people’s motives, inclinations, biases, and needs. He writes elegantly; he’s urbane. He can make you smile.
When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.
Don’t hold on to anything too firmly. Fools are stubborn, and the stubborn are fools, and the more erroneous their judgment is, the more they hold on to it.
You will never be intelligent unless you know how to take a hint. The truths that matter most to us are always half spoken, fully understood only by the prudent.
He’s attuned to the things that turn people off:
Never compete. When you vie with your opponents, your reputation suffers. Your competitor will immediately try to find your fault and discredit you. Rivalry discovers the defects that courtesy overlooks.
Don't have the spirit of contradiction. You will only burden yourself with foolishness and annoyance
Never exaggerate. It isn’t wise to use superlatives. They offend the truth and cast doubt on your judgment. True eminences are rare, so temper your esteem. To overvalue something is a form of lying. It can ruin your reputation for good taste and — even worse — for wisdom.
Gracián wrote some great zingers:
Few bothersome things are important enough to bother with.
Prudence refuses to deal in probability: it always walks under the midday sun of reason.
Carry right too far and it becomes wrong. The orange squeezed completely dry gives only bitterness.
Deceit is superficial, and superficial people are quick to run to her.
How “Ignatian” is all this? I’m a fan; I quoted Gracián thirteen times in my book What Matters Most and Why, mostly in the parts having to do with relationships and making good decisions. But it’s fair to say that Gracián’s counsel is “worldly wisdom”; he doesn’t talk about wanting what God wants, seeking the greater good, achieving indifference, and other Ignatian themes. God is hardly mentioned in the Pocket Oracle. You’d never guess the author was a Jesuit.
For example, consider Gracián’s attitude toward reputation. He was obsessed with reputation—enhancing it, protecting it, using one’s good name to influence others and to get ahead in the world. In contrast, Ignatius thought that excessive concern for one’s reputation was a mortal threat to one’s spiritual health. In the Exercises he depicts Satan instructing his minions to lead humans to ruin by causing them to pursue worldly honor and glory.
Ignatius and Gracián would seem to be at odds here, but the matter is nuanced. The excessive pursuit of honor might be a spiritual danger, but honor per se is not. Ignatius was quick to defend his own considerable honor when circumstances called for it. He was an aristocrat. More than once he pulled rank when someone of lesser status objected to something he was doing—the sixteenth-century equivalent of the mayor of the town saying “do you know who I am?” to the cop who stops him for speeding. Several times he insisted on a formal inquiry to clear his name when influential people charged him with false teaching. As superior of the Jesuits he was a skilled bureaucratic operator who was not reluctant to use his prestige to outmaneuver his opponents and get powerful friends to back his projects.
Indeed, Ignatius insisted that Jesuits use every resource — worldly as well as spiritual — to advance their work. This didn’t sit well with some critics. They thought that a fervent faith was sufficient. Raising money, enlisting the help of influential friends, honing one’s secular skills — these sorts of things were “bending the knee to Baal,” as one Jesuit complained, that is, leaning on dark spiritual forces to advance the work of God. Ignatius thought that this was naïve. “The man who thinks this way has not learned how to use all things for God’s glory,” he wrote.
The point, of course, is that reputation, wealth, influence, education and all the other worldly helps are to be used to advance God’s glory, not our own. Ignatius quoted St. Augustine, “our reputation is for others, not for ourselves.” If we seek honor for ourselves we’re in trouble. If we use our reputation and good name to help others, we’re in a good place.
Gracián never said anything like this. He was an agnostic on the question of the goals people pursue. His counsel can be used to build the kingdom of God or enlarge your personal empire. No doubt this moral neutrality bothered some Jesuits but it probably contributes to the enduring appeal of his writing. Among Gracián’s biggest fans in the nineteenth century were Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, no fans of Christianity.
The great irony of Gracián’s career is that he was unable to take his own advice, at least as far as the Jesuits were concerned. He couldn’t get along with his Jesuit superiors. He clashed repeatedly with them. He was disciplined many times. Once he was punished with a diet of bread and water. One of his superiors called him colericus (choleric), biliosus (ill-humored), and melancolicus (melancholic). When he died in 1657 he was demanding to be released from the Society and allowed to become a monk.
Is Baltasar Gracián’s writing “Ignatian?” I’d say yes. The Ignatian point of view doesn’t see a sharp distinction between worldly wisdom and sacred wisdom. Ignatius taught that God can be found in all things. Everything that’s human can teach us about God.