Evgeny Bogat

Evgeny Bogat (July 16, 1923 - May 16, 1985) was a Soviet journalist and writer. Quotes Eternal Man (1976) as translated by Christine Bushnell Marx once noted with sober precision: man cannot again become a child without falling into childishness. "But does the naivety of a child really not overjoy him," he wrote further, "and should he really not try to reproduce his true essence on a higher plane?" This is relevant both to mankind and to the individual. The meaning of working on oneself spiritually is in reproducing one's true essence on a higher plane. For this, one must be less forgetful of what one was, and what went before. p. 74 The earlier a person leaves childhood the more infantilism there will be within him later on. p. 284 There are many entirely similar men and women, but there are no children exactly alike. It would seem that differences among persons and differences in character should become more apparent as people grow older. But this is not the case. The differences sadly fade away, leaving only the memory of the wonderfully unique world of childhood. p. 285 Where has the child gone? Can it really be that a despondent, untalented person who goes around with an ordinary expression on his face and stereotyped phrases – can it be that once he was a child? At times, one may think, the child has really departed, he quietly slipped away at daybreak so that he would not have to turn into this person. He is living somewhere else – drawing, making models, delighting in the world, loving dogs and sunshine. p. 285 Is there, perhaps, somewhere, a fantastic land of boys and girls who run away to remain themselves? In this land of the eternal child there is no boy-Socrates, no boy-Tolstoy, for they did not need to run away, they live within eternal man. And perhaps in the future the population of this fantastic land will cease to grow, and not a single boy or girl will be added in the next 1,000 years, because man will, in the future, be able to keep the child within himself. p. 285