LEWIS HYDE …
on what he calls the spiritual economy of the imagination, which he approaches through an elaborate distinction between gift exchange and commodity exchange. Unlike a commodity, which is meant to be taken out of circulation, a gift, according to Hyde, must always be kept in motion: “whatever we have been given is supposed to be given away again”. The gift, he says,

is a pool or reservoir in which the sentiments of its own exchange accumulate so that the more often it is given away, the more feeling it carries, like an heirloom that has been passed down for generations. The gift gets steeped in the fluids of its own passage … What gathers in it is not only the sentiment of generosity but the affirmation of individual goodwill.