the pathetic fallacy

Treating nonhuman objects, ideas, or conceptual entities (such as countries) as if they have intentions, feelings or desires. A phrase coined by Victorian artist and philosopher John Ruskin in 1856. See also personification.
 

For example:

  • "Love wishes to be free
  • "Rwanda wants to punish the Congo
  • "The car just refuses to start
  • "Nature abhors a vacuum
  • "Iron likes a magnet
  • "Doesn't rain make a memory more intimate?
  • "The cruel, crawling foam
 
In Of the Pathetic Fallacy, Ruskin uses the last example above. If the foam merely crawled (human action), it'd simply be personified. But since it is cruel (human emotion or state), it partakes of the pathetic fallacy