The more he excels in quality the more in repute: he will always play first fiddle and you second... Never join one that eclipses you, but rather one who sets you in a brighter light... When you are on the way to fortune associate with the eminent; when arrived, with the mediocre.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Read this carefully, because half of it cuts against the other advice in this book. When you are climbing, attach yourself to the eminent: their light lifts you, their rooms become your rooms, and second fiddle in a great orchestra beats first fiddle in a poor one. The warning is narrower than it first sounds. It is about the permanent partner who so outshines you that you are only ever seen as an accessory, the co-founder who takes every stage, the friend whose reflected glory has become your whole identity. The test is direction: does this company raise your own standing over time, or does it fix you permanently as the lesser of the pair?
Practice
- While climbing, seek the eminent and accept the junior role; proximity to excellence is the fastest education and the widest door (maxim 11 makes it a classroom).
- Watch for the permanent-shadow trap: if years pass and you are still only "his associate," the light is not reaching you.
- Once established, do not surround yourself only with your betters; a room where you are always the smallest figure eventually shrinks you.
Use this when
- Use this choosing partners and long collaborations, where billing and credit compound over years.
- Use it in reverse as the senior: set your juniors in a brighter light on purpose, and they will bring you their best (maxim 62 gives all credit to the principal anyway).
Ignore this when
- Don't avoid the eminent out of insecurity; the climb needs them, and hiding among lessers to feel tall is its own cage.
- Don't measure a friendship by billing; some company is for love, not for standing, and that kind is exempt.
A picture of it
A young lawyer joins the chambers of a famous senior and spends five years genuinely in shadow, carrying bags, drafting notes nobody credits. She treats it as tuition, absorbs how the senior reads a room, and leaves at the exact point the shadow would have become permanent, when clients had started asking for her by name. Her batchmate took a first-chair role in a small firm on day one, top of a tiny hill, and is still on it. The shadow was worth more than the spotlight, for exactly as long as it was moving her upward.
Stand in a great figure's light while it lifts you. Step out the moment it starts fixing you in place.