the greatest weakness. The group code has narrowed the sense of responsi- bility by refusing to admit the applica- tion of its principles beyond the group. Thereby it has weakened its own logic and its sanction, most notably in the case of national groups, which have refused to apply or even to relate their internal codes to the international world. On the other hand the attempt of professional groups to coordinate their responsibilities, relating at once the individual to the group and the group itself to the wider community, marks thus an important advance.
The problem of professional ethics, viewed as the task of coordinating responsibilities, of finding, as it were, a common centre for the various circles of interest, wider and narrower, is full of difficulty and far from being com- pletely solved. The magnitude and the social significance of this task appear if we analyze on the one hand the character of the professional interest, and on the other the relation of that interest to the general welfare.
The Character of the Pro- fessional Interest
The professional interest combines a number of elements. It includes what we may term the extrinsic interest, that devoted to the economic and so- cial status, the reputation, authority, success and emoluments attaching to the profession as a body. It includes also the technical interest directed to the art and craft of the profession, to the maintenance and improvement of its standards of efficiency, to the quest for new and better methods and proc- esses and to the definition and pro- motion of the training considered requisite for the practice of the pro- fession. It may also include a third interest which can be classed as cul- tural. To illustrate, in the profession of teaching the technical interest in the
system of imparting knowledge is one thing, and the cultural interest in the knowledge imparted quite another. Even more obvious is the case of the minister of religion, whose technique of ministration is as a rule very simple and whose main interest lies in the significance of the doctrine. The dis- tinction is clear also in the spheres of the sciences and of the fine arts where the interest in truth or beauty may be discerned from the interest in the modes of investigation or of expression. In other professions it may be harder to identify the cultural as distinct from the technical interest, but if we in- terpret the term culture widely enough to include, for example, such objects as health and the beauty of workman- ship, it may be maintained that the cultural interest belongs to every pro- fession and is in fact one of the criteria by which to determine whether or not a given occupation is to be classed as a profession.
Now these three strands of interest are usually interwoven in the general professional interest, but sometimes they are separated and subject to the pull of opposite forces. Thus while the technical and economic interest usually go together and while, for ex- ample, the maintenance of standards usually works towards the economic advantage of the profession, these may be unfortunately disjoined. Better technique may at points be antago- nistic to professional gain. The law- yer may, to take one instance, lose a source of profits by the introduction of a simpler and more efficient sys- tem of conveyancing. The architect, working on a percentage basis, may find his pecuniary advantage at vari- ance with his professional duty to secure the best service for the least cost. Likewise, opposition may arise between the economic and the cultural interest. The teacher and the preacher
