[France] Michel Manson: “The Eternal Toy”

[French] Michel Manson: “The Eternal Toy,” translated by Su Qiyun and Wang Xinlian, Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House, August 2004, 26 yuan

The reasons that attracted me to buy this book are as follows: first, it was on sale; second, it is serious scholarly work on something that appears to be an ordinary object. The seriousness of this is evident from the 46 pages of notes appended at the end of the book (the Chinese edition reproduces all the notes in facsimile, which was no small feat); third, I am very interested in this topic.

After reading it, I found myself somewhat disappointed. Neither the writing nor the argument really stirred my interest, so I quickly skimmed through it. The citations of Locke, Diderot, Rousseau, Kant, and others on toys did catch my eye for a moment, but the author himself does not seem to have dug any deeper. In the “conclusion” of the final chapter, I looked for a long time but still could not make out what conclusion the author had actually reached, and I also failed to notice any further explanation of the title “The Eternal Toy” — why is the toy “eternal”?

The reason I care about the topic of “toys” is, first of all, that toys belong to children. Since reading The Disappearance of Childhood, the issue of childhood has become prominent in my field of vision; secondly, because it involves the question of “technology” — objects as technological entities are by no means merely “tools” in the ordinary sense, but also include religious and ritual objects, works of art, and toys. Toys are in fact what connect technology with nature, and tools with art. Some toys can be taken directly from nature; others require ingenious design and superb craftsmanship.

Or one could say that toys are tools for obtaining pleasure, though perhaps a better way to put it is that toys have no definite purpose. “Play” is an activity that does not require a purpose. Even someone utterly without opinions, without ambitions, still knows how to play. When you pick up a hammer, you are always thinking of nails; but when you pick up a toy, you do not need any other goal — you only need to think of the toy itself. Put another way: if we say that we take up a hammer in order to drive nails, then what are we driving nails for? If we insist on tracing things all the way back, then probably any purpose ultimately has to be reduced to the pursuit of pleasure, satisfaction, or some sense of fulfillment, right? But unlike other tools, toys do not need to go through that detour; they point directly to the end,

Compared with hammers, axes, and other “directional” tools, which kind is more important for human beings, or rather, which kind is the more authentic technology? Perhaps toys are the more fundamental, the more original? If a person’s growth is a microcosm of the growth of the whole of human civilization, then what he first takes up in his hands is not a hammer, but a toy — even a walnut or some other natural object, or a hammer-like tool, once it reaches a child’s hand, still becomes a “toy.” Perhaps it is through playing with toys that a child constructs his own world. I am now somewhat inclined to believe that the first artifact human beings made was not for hunting, but simply for play.

October 6, 2007

Latest Comments

• Yiwu

  2007-10-06 20:09:56 

  Sometimes I think that if childhood really is a miniature of humanity’s early history, then that is truly astonishing — God has placed the answer within the lives of tens of billions of human beings. Another magnificent unity of the micro and the macro…
  What I want to say is:
  Great childhood!
  I am also quite attentive to childhood. But perhaps our starting points are different~ I seem to focus most on the psychological formation process of childhood.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.