THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON AND AN 

 IMPERIAL INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 1 



By AUGUSTUS D. WALLER, M.D., F.R.S. 

 Late Dean of the Faculty of Science of the University of London 



The custom that I find in force at this University is one that 

 no man, however retiring of disposition he may be, can fail to 

 obey. For it is a duty which I understand is never shirked, 

 that any member of a Faculty, on returning from abroad, 

 should report himself and his enlarged experience to a meeting 

 of the whole University, and it is therefore no less a duty that 

 cannot be shirked that a visitor from abroad should respond 

 to the invitation to address the University on some topic 

 that may be expected to be of common interest 



I have been informed that, coming as I do from the University 

 of London — which to many people abroad, and indeed to some 

 people in London itself, is a somewhat mysterious entity — 

 it would be welcome that I should tell the University of 

 California something about the University of London. 



I shall not offer you an epitome of its calendar, nor of its 

 past history, nor describe to you its colleges and schools, nor 

 dilate upon its constitution and its government. Rather than 

 attempt to describe the University of London as it was yesterday 

 and is to-day, I prefer to direct my attention and yours upon its 

 immediate future, and upon some of the first principles that 

 determine the healthy University in the healthy community — 

 the mens sana in corpore sano. 



I am not speaking now as a practical man, but as an idealist. 

 Therefore I feel all the more free to confess as a first article 

 of my University faith, that in last resort the motive of pure 

 science must always be the practical motive, and that every 

 student is required to render service to the community whose 

 manifold services he enjoys. " Here's to the latest discovery, 



1 Being the substance of an address delivered to the University of California, 

 Berkeley, Cal. U.S.A., on September 23, 1909. 



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