no man can be thought a true or worthy member of a profession who does not admit, both in theory and in the rules and practices of his life, that he has a public function to serve, and that he must frequently be at some discomfort or disadvantage because of the calls of professional duty. The laborer is worthy of his hire; and the professional man is entitled to obtain, if he can, a competence for himself and his family from the useful and productive service he is rendering to his fellow men. He may even, through genius or through the great confidence his character and skill inspire, gain considerable wealth in the practice of his profession. But if he is a true professional man he does not derive his incentive to effort solely or chiefly from the pecuniary gains that his profession brings him. Nor is the amount of his income regarded among the fellow members of his profession as the true test or measure of his success.

Thus the lawyer, in the theory of his profession, bears an important public relation to the dispensing of justice and to the protection of the innocent and the feeble. He is not a private person, but a part of the system for supporting the reign of law and of right in the community. Historically, in this country, the lawyer has also borne a great part in the making and administering of our institutions of government. If, as some of us think, the ethical code of that profession needs to be somewhat revised in view of present-day conditions, and needs also to be more sternly applied to some of the members of the profession, it is true, none the less, that there clearly belongs to this great calling a series of duties of a public nature, some of them imposed by the laws of the land, and others inherent in the very nature of the occupation itself.

It is true in an even more marked and undeniable fashion that the profession of medicine, by virtue of its public and social aspects, is distinguished in a marked way from a calling in life in which a man might feel that what he did was strictly his own business, subject to nobody's scrutiny, or inquiry, or interference. The physician's public obligation is in part prescribed by the laws of the State which regulate medical practice, and in very large part by the professional codes which have been evolved by the profession itself for its own guidance. It is not the amount of his fee that the overworked doctor is thinking about when he risks his own health in response to night calls, or when he devotes himself to some especially painful or difficult case. Nor is it a mere consideration of his possible earnings that would deter him from seeking comfort and safety by taking his family to Europe at a time when an epidemic had broken out in his own neighborhood.

I need not allude to the unselfish devotion to the good of the community that in so high a degree marks the lives of most of the members of the clerical profession, for this is evident to all observant persons.

On the other hand, it cannot be too clearly perceived that there is nothing in the disinterestedness, and in the obligation to render public service characterizing professional life that amounts to unnatural self-denial or painful renunciation,—unless in some extreme and individual cases. On the contrary, professional life at its best offers a great advantage in so far as it permits a man to think first of the work he is doing and the social service he is rendering, rather than of pecuniary reward. I have myself on more than one occasion pointed out to young men the greater prospect for happiness in life that comes with the choice of a calling in which the work itself primarily focuses the attention, and in which the pecuniary reward comes as an incident rather than as the conscious and direct result of a given effort.

The greatest pleasure in work is that which comes from the trained and regulated exercise of the faculty of imagination. In the conduct of every law case this faculty has abundant opportunity, as it also has in the efforts of the physician to aid nature in the restoration of health and vigor in the individual, or in the sanitary protection of the community. I hope I have made clear this point: that pecuniary success, even in large measure, in the work of a professional man, may be entirely compatible with disinterested devotion to a kind of work that makes for the public weal, while it is also worthy of pursuit for its own sake, and brings content and even happiness in the doing. And it is clear enough, in the case of a professional man, that he is false to his profession and to his plain obligations if he shows himself to be ruled by the anti-social spirit; that is to say, if he considers himself absolved from any duties towards the community about him; thinks that the practice of his profession is a private affair for his own profit and advantage, and holds that he has done his whole duty when he has escaped liability for malpractice or disbarment.

But the three oldest and best recognized professions no longer stand alone, in the estimation of our higher educational authorities and of the intelligent public. In a democracy like ours, with a constantly advancing conception of what is involved in education for citizenship and for participation in every individual function of the social and economic life, the work of the teacher comes to be recognized as professional in the highest sense. Teaching, indeed, seems destined in the near future to become the very foremost of all the professions. This recognition will come when the idea takes full possession of the public mind that the chief task of each generation is to train the next one, and to transmit such stores of knowledge and useful experience as it has received from its predecessors or has evolved for itself.

It is obvious enough that the work of the teacher gives room for the play of the loftiest ideals, and that its functions are essentially public and disinterested. But there are other callings, such as those of the architect and engineer, which have also come to be spoken of as professional in their nature. Their kinship to the older professions has been more readily recognized by the men of conservative university traditions, because much of the preparation for these callings can advantageously be of an academic sort. Architecture in its historical aspects is closely associated with the study of classical periods; while the profession of the engineer relates itself to the immemorial university devotion to mathematics. And in like manner the man who for practical purposes becomes a chemist or an electrician would be easily admitted by President Eliot, for example, to the favored fellowship of the professional classes for the reason, first, of the disciplinary and liberalizing nature of the studies that underlie his calling, and, in the second place, of the public and social aspects of the functions he fulfils in the pursuit of his vocation.

The architect, the civil or mechanical or electrical engineer, and the chemist, as well as the professional teacher, the trained librarian, or the journalist who carries on his work with due sense of its almost unequaled public duties and responsibilities,—all these are now admitted by dicta of our foremost authorities to a place equal with the law, medicine, and the ministry in the list of the professions; that is to say, in the group of callings which, under my definition, are distinguished especially by their public character. And in this group, of course, should be included politicians, legislators, and public administrators in so far as they serve the public interests reputably and in a professional spirit. Nor should we forget such special classes of public servants as the officers of the army and navy; while nobody will deny public character and professional rank to men of letters, artists, musicians and actors.

In all these callings it is demanded not merely that men shall be subject to the private rules of conduct,—that they must not cheat, or lie, or steal, or bear false witness, or be bad neighbors or undesirable citizens,—but in