ion" himself, though this feeling may have
had a certain influence; it was due to a proper sense of the dignity of
the intellectual life. Buffon could not bear to be called a
"naturalist," and Cuvier in the same way disliked the title of
Hellenist, because it sounded professional: he said that though he knew
more Greek than all the Academy he was not a Hellenist as Gail was,
because he did not live by Greek.

Now, if this feeling had arisen merely from a dislike to having it
supposed that one is obliged to earn his own living, it would have been
a contemptibly vulgar sentiment, whoever professed it. Nothing can be
more honorable to a man than to earn his bread by honest industry of any
kind, whether it be manual or intellectual, and still I feel with Byron,
and Buffon, and Cuvier, that the great instruments of the world's
intellectual culture ought not to be, in the ordinary sense,
professions. Byron said that poetry, as he understood it, was "an art,
an attribute," but not what is understood by a "profession." Surely the
same is true of all the highest intellectual work, in whatever kind. You
could scarcely consider Faraday's life to be what is commonly understood
by a professional life. Tyndall says that if Faraday had chosen to
employ his talents in analytical chemistry he might have realized a
fortune of 150,000_l._ Now that would have been a professional
existence; but the career which Faraday chose (happily for science) was
not professional, but intellectual. The distinction between the
professional and the intellectual lives is perfectly clear in my own
mind, and therefore I ought to be able to express it clearly. Let me
make the attempt.

The purpose of a profession, of a profession pure and simple, is to turn
knowledge and talent to pecuniary profit. On the other hand, the purpose
of cultivated men, or men of genius, who work in an unprofessional
spirit, is to increase knowledge, or make it more accurate, or else
simply to give free exercise to high faculties which demand it. The
distinction is so clear and trenchant that most intellectual men, whose
private fortunes are not large, prefer to have a profession distinct
from their higher intellectual work, in order to secure the perfect
independence of the latter. Mr. Smiles, in his valuable book on
"Character," gives a list of eminent intellectual men who have pursued
real professional avocations of various kinds separately from their
literary or scientific ac