The true road to respect is through merit, and if industry accompany merit the path becomes shorter. Integrity alone is not sufficient, push and insistence is degrading... The true way is the middle one, half-way between deserving a place and pushing oneself into it.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Two failure modes bracket the right path. On one side, the person who believes merit alone should be enough and refuses to make it visible, then grows bitter as pushier and lesser people advance. On the other, the pure self-promoter, who shoves and insists and arrives so covered in the dust of his own striving that the manner discredits whatever merit he had. The maxim's road runs between them: build real merit, add the industry that makes it move, and let it be seen without either hiding it or shoving it. Deserve the place and allow the deserving to be visible. This pairs with the visibility maxims, but adds the warning that visibility pursued too hard becomes presumption, and presumption undoes the very respect that merit was earning.
Practice
- Build the merit first, then make it visible without apology and without shoving; the middle road needs both halves (maxim 130 makes the work legible).
- Add industry to merit; effort visibly applied shortens the path to the place you deserve.
- Watch the presumption line; if your self-advancement is starting to read as pushiness, you are covering your merit in dust (maxim 106 warns against parading position).
Use this when
- Use this in career advancement, where both hiding your merit and over-pushing it are common and costly errors.
- Use it to diagnose a stall; if you are deserving but overlooked, the missing element is usually visible industry, not more merit.
Ignore this when
- Don't slide into pure self-promotion; push and insistence degrade the respect that merit earns, and the manner outlasts the gain.
- Don't wait passively to be discovered either; merit that stays invisible loses to lesser, louder work, and modesty is not a strategy (maxim 130).
A picture of it
Two equally capable officers want the same advancement. One believes his work should speak for itself, says nothing, makes nothing visible, and is passed over by people he considers his inferiors, growing bitter in private. The other shoves, campaigns openly, corners seniors at every event, and is passed over too, because the pushiness has made him tiresome and cast doubt on the merit underneath. A third, on the middle road, does excellent work and makes sure it is seen in the ordinary legitimate ways, the clear report, the credited result, and advances without either hiding or shoving. Merit made visible, industry applied, presumption avoided: the road ran exactly between the two who failed.
Deserve the place and let the deserving show. Merit hidden loses to noise; merit shoved discredits itself. Walk the middle.