The Trailblazing 18th-Century Woman

of Letters Germaine de Staël on

Ambition and the Crucial Difference
Between Ego and Genius
“True glory cannot be obtained by relative celebrity.”
By Maria Popova

The Trailblazing 18th-Century Woman of Letters Germaine de Staël on Ambition and

the Crucial Difference Between Ego and Genius

Germaine de Staël (April 22, 1766–July 14, 1817) is celebrated as the first Modern
Woman. Tolstoy counted her among the “influential forces” that have propelled
humanity’s progress. Lord Byron considered her the greatest living writer. Emerson
credited her with introducing him to German thought, which shaped his own influential
philosophy. She was among a handful of women, alongside Joan of Arc and Sappho,
included in Auguste Comte’s famous Calendar of Great Men — a compendium of 559
world-changing minds, spanning from Saint Augustine to Galileo to Zeno. (Lest we
forget, brilliant women have been “men” for the vast majority of human history.)
Napoleon — who banished her from Paris for a decade for opposing his dictatorial
regime and punished all who visited her in exile — reportedly recognized only three
powers in Europe: Britain, Russia, and Germaine de Staël.

In the midst of the French Revolution, De Staël composed A Treatise on the Influence
of the Passions Upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations (public library | PDF)
— a visionary inquiry into the limits of and optimal conditions for human flourishing on
the interdependent scales of the one and the many.

Germaine de Staël (Posthumous portrait by François Pascal Simon, 1817)

One of the most insightful portions of the book deals with the proper aim of ambition —
or what De Staël terms “the love of glory” — and the crucial difference between ego
and genius. Half a century before Dostoyevsky contemplated ambition and success, De
Staël writes:

Of all the passions of which the human heart is susceptible, there is none which
possesses so striking a character as the Love of Glory. The traces of its operations may
be discovered in the primitive nature of man, but it is only in the midst of society that
this sentiment acquires its true force.

[…]
According to that sublimity of virtue which seeks in our own conscience for the motive
and the end of conduct, the love of glory is the most exalted principle which can actuate
the soul.

And yet this universal motive force has as its object something that eludes all but the
very few who possess true genius. A century and a half before Einstein lamented the
charade of celebrity, De Staël writes:

True glory cannot be obtained by relative celebrity. We always summon the universe
and posterity to confirm the title of so august a crown. It cannot be preserved, then, but
by genius, or by virtue.

Illustration by Vladimir Radunsky for On a Beam of Light: A Story of Albert Einstein

by Jennifer Berne

Noting that the “fleeting success” attained by ambition can only resemble but is not
glory — “that which is truly just and great” — De Staël admonishes that ambition
syphons happiness with “the seducing brilliancy of its charms,” which yield no
satisfaction of substance. She paints the social contract at the heart of vain ambition —
a contract that aims at the gratification of the ego but masquerades as selfless
contribution to the greater good:

The honorable and sincere friend of glory proposes a magnanimous treaty with the
human race. He thus addresses them: “I will consecrate my talents to your service. My
ruling passion will incessantly impel me to communicate happiness to the greatest
portion of mankind by the fortunate result of my efforts. Even countries and nations
unknown to me shall have right to the fruit of my wakeful toils. Every thinking being
possesses common relations to me; and, free from the contracted influence of individual
sentiments, I measure the degree of my happiness only by the extent of my beneficence.
As the reward of this devoted attachment, all I ask is, that you celebrate its author, that
you command fame to discharge your debt of gratitude. Virtue, I know, constitutes its
own enjoyment and reward. For me, however, I require your assistance, in order to
obtain that reward which is necessary to my happiness, that the glory of my name be
united to the merit of my actions.” What openness, what simplicity in this contract!
How is it possible … that genius alone should have fulfilled its conditions?

More than a century and a half before the pioneering mathematician G.H. Hardy
asserted that “the noblest ambition is that of leaving behind something of permanent
value,” De Staël wryly argues that there is egotism rather than nobility in such an aim:

Doubtless it is a most fascinating enjoyment, to make the universe resound with our
name, to exist so far beyond ourselves that we can reconcile our minds to any illusion,
both as to the nature of space and the duration of life, and believe that we constitute
some of the metaphysical attributes of the Eternal. The soul swells with elevated
delight, by the habitual consciousness that the whole attention of a great number of men
is directed towards you, that you exist in their hopes, that every idea that rises in your
mind may influence the destiny of multitudes, that great events ripen and unfold
themselves in your breast, and in the name of the people who rely upon your knowledge
demand the most lively attention to your own thoughts. The acclamations of the
multitude agitate the soul at once by the reflexions which they inspire, and by the
commotions which they produce.

Art by Olivier Tallec from Blob by Joy Sorman — a lovely picture-book about how the
lust for approval and acclaim hijacks our self-esteem.

The vision of such electrifying acclaim, De Staël argues, is a powerful animating force,
particularly for those still young and hungry to establish themselves as worthy of the
world’s admiration. It is curious and disquieting to consider how, a quarter millennium
later, the Pavlovian feedback loop of social media is only deepening the groove of this
perilous human hunger for glory — or, in our modern case, the vacant simulacra of
glory in the form of “likes.” De Staël considers the addictive allure of this pursuit of
validation:

The paths which lead to this great end are strewed with charms. The exertions which the
ardour of attaining it prescribes, are themselves accompanied with delight; and in the
career of success, sometimes the most fortunate incidents with which it is attended arise
from the interests by which it was preceded, and which communicate an active energy
to life.

Such vain ambition hangs happiness on the amount of attention and acclamation one
receives from one’s peers and contemporaries. As its counterpoint, De Staël paints true
genius, which unmoors its happiness from both popular opinion and time:

Every discovery which knowledge has produced, by enriching the mass, diminishes the
empire of the individual. Human kind is the heir of genius, and the truly great men are
those who have rendered such superior beings as themselves less necessary to future
generations. The more the mind is allowed to expatiate in the future career of possible
perfectibility, the more we see the advantages of understanding surpassed by positive
knowledge, and the spring of virtue more powerful than the passion of glory.

Complement this particular fragment of A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions

Upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations with David Foster Wallace on the
double-edged sword of ambition, Thoreau on defining your own success, and a lovely
picture-book about how the hunger for fame hijacks self-esteem, then revisit De Staël’s
timeless insight into the tragic psychology of envy.

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