The effect of the book helped to promulgate Neill's educational theories, as well as reviving the flagging attendance at the long-running experimental school that he had founded in 1921 in Germany in conjunction with the Neue Schule, & then moved to England in 1923.

    The Love of Learning and the Desire for God is composed of a series of lectures given to young monks at the Institute of Monastic Studies at Sant'Anselmo in Rome during the winter of 1955-56.

    A few of the songs were written after the emancipation, but all were inspired by it.

    Lawyers, bankers, governors, business heads, administrators, all wise educated people need a lasting understanding of physics so that they can enjoy those contacts with science and scientists that are part of our civilization both materially and intellectually. They need knowledge and understanding instead of the feelings, all too common, that physics is dark and mysterious and that physicists are a strange people with incomprehensible interests. Such a sense of understanding science and scientists can be gained neither from sermons on the beauty of science nor from the rigorous courses that colleges have offered for generations; when the headache clears away it leaves little but a confused sense of mystery. Nor is the need met by survey courses that offer a smorgasbord of tidbit--they give science a bad name as a compendium of information or formulas.The non-scientist needs a course of study that enables him to learn real science and make its own--with delight. For lasting benefits the intelligent non-scientist needs a course of study that enables him to learn genuine science carefully and then encourages him to think about it and use it. He needs a carefully selected framework of topics--not so many that learning becomes superficial and hurried; not so few that he misses the connected nature of scientific work and thinking. He must see how scientific knowledge is built up by building some scientific knowledge of his own, by reading and discussing and if possible by doing experiments himself. He must think his own way through some scientific arguments. He must form his own opinion, with guidance, concerning the parts played by experiment and theory; and he must be shown how to develop a taste for good theory. He must see several varieties of scientific method at work. And above all, he must think about science for himself and enjoy that. These are the things that this book encourages readers to gain, by their own study and thinking."Physics for the Inquiring Mind" is a book for the inquiring mind of students in college and for other readers who want to grow in scientific wisdom, who want to know what physics really is.

    It has been written to help you develop, on your own, a plan of personal culture, of self-education, that will benefit you for your entire life, and to show you practical methods of teaching yourself so that the effort can be brought to some result.The plan offered is not a series of courses to be taken at home. It is not a method for acquiring a certain amount of skill or knowledge in a specific direction. It is a plan for your whole intellectual lifetime. It includes everything learned or heard of, in school or out. It comprises everything read or seen that you can raise to the height of thought. It is primarily a habit and an outlook. Since what is planned is the intelligent life itself, it can never come to an end.No previous education is required except the ability to read this book and to count. It is necessary that you should want to know more, feel more, see and respond to more than you can when you begin. Some good will is needed, a friendly feeling toward the achievement of the human mind.