Large Fierce Mammal

Baltasar Gracián in a portrait by an unknown artist.

Baltasar Gracián (8 January 1601 – 6 December 1658) was a Spanish Jesuit and writer. A thorn in the side of his superiors for a number of reasons, not least for his propensity to publish his personal views without official permission, and once having read from the pulpit a letter he said he had just received from Hell, he is best known today as the author of Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia, translated into English as The Art of Worldly Wisdom. Consisting of 300 “Maxims” with supporting commentary, the tome provides a handy and thorough guide to navigating the treacherous waters of society where, then as now, things are only very rarely what they seem.

Not surprisingly, The Art of Worldly Wisdom enjoys popularity alongside such worthy works as The Book of Five Rings in being regarded as a template for success that still brims with relevance in the modern world. The lifetimes of both Baltasar Gracián and Miyamoto Musashi overlapped in their mutual environments, each unknown to the other, and fathoming life from his own perspective – one an administrator of Catholicism, the other arguably the greatest swordsman who has ever lived – each speaking his Truth from a foundation of intellectual and life experience that lies outside abstract systems of belief, addressing only what is necessary. What springs from the Nature of Man.

The animal called Man, like all others, represents a temporary pinnacle of evolutionary development aimed at filling a niche deemed by Nature to be necessary. The paths to individual fulfillment will vary as individuals vary – in their abilities, aptitudes, and level of understanding. All Nature’s creatures must continually face a fluctuating set of environmental circumstances and divine the options that exist. Sometimes the circumstances are slow to change and, for the most part, predictable. Sometimes they are terribly transient. And so, we have “The Moment” for which, if the NOW represents a desirable situation, the best option may be to go with the flow. If not, there are other options, including moving on, adapting in place, or dying.

So, in reading the works of the two men I’ve spoken of here, seek not a similarity in specific content. Seek instead what may not, at first, be apparent. On one hand, we have a priest whose Truth was not founded in an abstract concept of God, but in the Nature of Man, outside the bounds of the faith he served. On the other, a warrior whose Truth found the same outcome extraneous to the Warrior Way and the problem solving applications of cold steel. They were both Men in the appropriately Wild sense of the word.