SOURCE: “Wordsworth's Summer Vacation Reflection: Its Connection with Alfred N. Whitehead's Thought,” in New Letters, Vol. 51, No. 2, Winter, 1984-5, pp. 119-26.

In the following essay, Cappon discusses the relationship between Whitehead and William Wordsworth as inheritors of the ancient Greek philosophy of flux originated by Heraclitus.

Is it true that in our lives there can be moments of very special significance? Something like this belief seemed to occur to Wordsworth when, after returning home from college to the cottage where he had lived, he stepped out in the evening to roam the surrounding fields. Are such special moments possible for us to attain provided that we have not previously been quiescent and inert? According to the poet a human being can reach, under certain circumstances, a stage of spiritual nakedness as in the presence of the divine. So it was, in his feeling, on the occasion of this...