Conrad Aiken

From Philosopedia

Aiken, Conrad (5 August 1889 - 17 August 1973)

A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Aiken when asked about humanism responded to Warren Allen Smith:

• Yes, I suppose I‘m a naturalistic humanist, if I’m anything–that, and an evolutionist–I am against all forms of supernaturalism, dogma, myth, church–primarily I believe in the evolution of consciousness as something we’re embarked on willy-nilly, the evolution of mind, and that devotion to this is all the devotion we need. You will find these and other pertinent views in the prefaces to the individual poems in my collected “symphonies,” The Divine Pilgrim, Georgia University Press, 1949.

Original is in Harvard's Houghton Library

{CL; CE; HNS; WAS, 30 March 1951}