making more distinct the positive
and active phases of business ethics that I should like to present in
such a way as to fasten them upon the attention.

Many young men, to whom these views are addressed, will doubtless
choose, or have already chosen, what is commonly known as a
professional career. The ministry, law, and medicine are the oldest and
best recognized of the so-called liberal or learned professions. Now
what are the distinctive marks of professional life? Are the men who
practice these professions not also business men? And if so, how are
they different from those business men who are considered laymen, or
non-professional? Obviously the distinctions that are to be drawn, if
any, are in the nature of marked tendencies. We shall not expect to
find any hard and fast lines. Many lawyers, some doctors, and a few
clergymen are clearly enough business men, in the sense that they
attach more importance to the economic bearings of the part they play
in the social organism than to the higher ethical or intellectual
aspects of their work.

I have read and heard many definitions of what really constitutes a
professional man. Whatever else, however, may characterize the nature
of his calling, it seems to me plain that 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.