definite professional appointments or are otherwise more or less actively engaged in the work of the professional chemist. A profession surely stands in need of no apology which includes and has included in its ranks, within such a limited period, such a host of distinguished members.
So far, moreover, from his professional eminence and usefulness being made a matter of reproach to the scientific man, it should constitute rightly a claim to his higher consideration; and, far from being accounted a disparagement, should be held as an addition to his scientific standing. In the professions most allied to our own on the one side and on the other, this is well recognized. The physician and the engineer are not merely students of pathology and of mechanics, however important may have been their contributions to pathology and mechanics respectively, but they are the distinguished craftsmen in their respective arts. And, whether or not they may have made important contributions to pure science, their rank as eminent scientific men is everywhere and rightly conceded to them. A lucky chance happening to any professional man may indeed bring him to the front, but no succession of lucky chances can ever happen that will of themselves prove adequate to keeping him there. Great qualities are ever necessary to sustain great professional positions; and to be for years one of the foremost in a scientific profession is of itself at least as substantial an evidence of scientific attainment as is the publication of a memoir on some minute point, say of anatomy, or chemistry, or hydrodynamics, for example. And it is so recognized, and very properly recognized, even in quarters where pure science admittedly reigns supreme. Leading engineers and leading physicians and surgeons are every year admitted into the Royal Society, not on account of the importance attaching to any special contributions they may have made to mechanical or pathological science, but mainly because of their eminence in their several professions, in which to be eminent is of itself an evidence of scientific character and of extensive scientific knowledge. It may indeed be taken as beyond question that, to obtain and retain a leading position in a scientific profession needs, among other things, the possession of high scientific attainments. I say among other things, for without moral qualities in a notable degree, sympathy, endurance, courage, judgment, and good faith, no such professional success is conceivable. Professional eminence is the expression necessarily of scientific ability, but not of scientific ability alone. The self-engrossing science of the student has to be humanized by its association with the cares and wants, and the disappointments and successes, of an outside world.—Chemical News.
