To have and to hold

摘要

Small children collect shells or marbles; older ones comic books, dolls or toy cars. Grown-up children collect vintage cars, or paintings, or a huge range of other things, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Even birds do it. In the mountains of Papua New Guinea, the male bowerbird collects flowers, moss, berries and man-made items, and fashions them into a bower to attract a mate. Collecting, by one definition, is "the process of actively, selectively and passionately acquiring, possessing and disposing of valued things, often removed from ordinary use and perceived as part of a set." Hunting for them excites the collector, and taking possession of the object of his desire can be a moment of pure passion, sometimes literally. Don Juan, with his 1,003 conquests in Spain alone, was an archetypal collector. His hunting ground was half the human race, so he could never hope to complete the set. Most collectors pursue less ambitious goals, merely wanting to acquire every first edition by an author or every denomination of a stamp, and love putting the last piece into place.