An old man who is utterly alone in life and knows he is to die soon spends a lavish amount of money on a new roof for the old house in which he has lived a great number of years. This seemingly irrational expenditure is not for any sense of security it will give him (which is meaningless) but rather out of gratitude to the house which sheltered him. He wishes the house to "live on" and afford other people (strangers he will never meet) the same comfort it gave him for so many years. No difference between the this and the tenderness the artist feels for her artistic creations. Perhaps the feeling is even similar to the parent-child protective love. We are the animal which endows objects and abstractions with spirits. Really, most of us can't get through a single day without being an animist at some point.
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