![]() ![]() Augustine of Canterbury had landed in England in 597, sent by Pope Gregory. He also recalled visits to Richborough Castle, an old Roman fortress in ruins and he knew well the place nearby where St. One of Whitehead's dearest memories was his regular trips to Canterbury itself, only sixteen miles away. ![]() Tait used to drive over to Ramsgate frequently to spend the day the young boy even then regarded him as a very great man and once said that 'to have seen Tait was worth shelves of medieval history'. He would mention the way in which he accompanied his father on his parochial visits the great influence his father's preaching exerted on him as the older man ('an Old Testament man', he called him) with his great voice, which echoed through the old Norman church which he served, spoke fervently and forcefully to his congregation and the delight he felt in knowing one of his father's closest friends, Archbishop Tait. He imbibed the atmosphere of a clerical home and in later years he was accustomed to speak affectionately of his life there. He was taught by his father, learning from him both Latin and Greek. The boy remained at home until he was fourteen. He retained his post as schoolmaster until 1867, when he was made vicar of St Peter's, on the outskirts of Ramsgate. His father had been a schoolmaster in Ramsgate for a number of years before he decided on ordination in 1860. There was a clerical quality in the philosopher which was sometimes amusingly at odds with his incisive and critical remarks about traditional Christian theology. Whitehead's father was a clergyman of the Church of England his own brother became a famous bishop in the Anglican Church in India. However this may be, the fact is that Whitehead's greatest influence as a philosopher was first exerted in the New World it is only fairly recently that he is being read and his importance as a philosopher recognized in the country of his birth. Yet he found in the country where he now lived a certain freshness and resiliency which he said he felt was lacking in his own land. ![]() The writer has already mentioned seeing Whitehead at Princeton in the late twenties on that occasion there could be no doubt of his entirely English personality. Despite his long residence in the United States and his (and his wife's) decision to remain there after retirement from Harvard, Whitehead to the end of his days was an Englishman, in accent, in manner, and in attitude. The last ten years he had been retired, living in a comfortable flat in Cambridge in the United States and lecturing in many American universities, as well as working on several books which summed up his mature thinking about the world, God, man - and, as a sort of sideline - about 'the aims of education', to use the title of one of his last books. Between those two dates he had been for many years on the faculty of the University of Cambridge in England, resigning his position as Senior Lecturer in Mathematics in 1910 he had been both a teacher and an administrator at the University of London and for thirteen years he had been Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University in the United States. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States, on December 30, 1947, at the ripe age of eighty-six. Early Years Alfred North Whitehead was born in Ramsgate on February 6, 1861. ![]()
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