Bruce Charlton's Notions

*

Heaven and the Human Condition in ‘The Marring of Men’ (‘The debate of Finrod and Andreth’)

Bruce G Charlton. The Chronicle of the Oxford University C.S. Lewis Society, 2008; Vol 5, Issue 3: 20-29


The Argument from Desire

One of C.S. Lewis’s most famous arguments in support of Christianity is that the instinctive but otherworldly yearning emotion of ‘joy’ (in German, Sehnsucht) implies that there exists some means of satisfying this urge; otherwise humans would not experience it.

This is sometimes termed the ‘argument from desire’. In brief, it states that because humans profoundly and spontaneously desire something not of this world, the experience suggests the reality of the supernatural. Lewis used the argument in many of his best known Christian writings. In Mere Christianity, he argues that ‘[i]f I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world’. In ‘The Weight of Glory’, he notes that ‘we remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy’. And in the autobiographical Surprised by Joy, he comments that ‘[i]n a sense, the central story of [his] life is about nothing else’.

But Lewis is not the only among his friends to formulate an argument from desire. Perhaps the idea’s most powerful and compelling exposition can be found in a little-known and recently-published (1993) story by Lewis’ great friend J.R.R. Tolkien; a tale which was written in about 1959 and appears in the middle of Volume X of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien and published in twelve volumes between 1983 and 1996 [1]. Since The History of Middle-earth is read only by Tolkien scholars and enthusiasts, this wonderful dialogue is at present little known or discussed.

It is, of course, no coincidence that both Lewis and Tolkien should write of the argument from desire, since Lewis’s own conversion to Christianity was shaped by this argument: both Tolkien and Hugo Dyson used it in the famous late night conversation of September 1929 on Addison’s Walk in Magdalen College – an event which was recorded by both Lewis and Tolkien. Tolkien’s epistolary poem ‘Mythopoeia’ (addressed to Lewis) outflanks the counter-argument that this is mere wishful thinking or day-dreaming by asking the question: ‘Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream?’ And Tolkien used the argument again in a letter to his son Christopher dated 30 January 1945, in reference to the human yearning for the Garden of Eden:

…certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile’ [2].

But in ‘The Marring of Men’, Tolkien makes the argument from desire the basis of a fiction – and, as so often, Tolkien’s most personal concerns are most powerfully expressed in the terms of the mythic ‘secondary world’ he created.


‘The Marring of Men’

Tolkien’s story was never formally named – but probably the most compelling of its alternative titles was ‘The Marring of Men’ which I have adopted here . In the History of Middle-earth, the story is given its Elven name, ‘Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth’, translated as ‘The Debate of Finrod and Andreth’. The text of J.R.R. Tolkien’s story is about twenty pages long, with a further forty pages of notes and supplementary material compiled from other writings by J.R.R. Tolkien and notes by Christopher Tolkien.

‘The Marring of Men’ is part of the Silmarillion body of texts, which were composed over many decades, from Tolkien’s young adulthood during World War I right up until his death in 1973. This body of texts is sometimes referred to in its totality as Tolkien’s ‘Legendarium’, to distinguish it from the single volume Silmarillion selected by J.R.R. Tolkien’s son Christopher, and published in 1978.

The situation in ‘The Marring of Men’ is that of a conversation between Andreth, a mortal human woman, and Finrod Felagund, an immortal Noldo, a ‘High’ Elf. The explicit subject of their conversation is the nature and meaning of mortality, and its implications for the human condition – a subject which is probably the most fundamental of all religious topics, and which is certainly the single main interest and underlying theme of most of Tolkien’s fiction, including The Lord of the Rings. The implicit subject of the conversation is original sin and the fallen nature of Man – which is why the title ‘The Marring of Men’ seems appropriate.

But the conversation between Andreth and Finrod is not simply an abstract philosophical debate: It is fuelled both by world events and by personal experiences. The protagonists are aware of the imminent prospect of Middle-earth being irrevocably overrun and permanently destroyed by Morgoth. (The selfishness and assertive pride of Morgoth, the corrupt Vala or ‘fallen angel’ analogous to the Christian devil, are the primary origin of evil in Tolkien’s world.)

The personal element comes from the fact that the now middle-aged woman Andreth had fallen mutually in love with Finrod’s brother Aegnor in her youth, and had wished to marry the immortal Elf; but she was ultimately rejected by the Elf, who left to follow the call of duty and fight in the (believed hopeless) wars against Morgoth. It emerges during the conversation that Aegnor’s most compelling reason for rejecting Andreth was that he did not want love to turn to pity at her advancing age, infirmity and ultimate mortality – but (in Elven fashion) wished to preserve a memory of perfect love unstained by pity.

The ‘marring’ referred to in the title is mortality. The first question is whether Men were created mortal, or whether Men were originally immortal but lapsed into mortality due to some event analogous to original sin.


Immortal Elves and Mortal Men

While mortality is a universal feature of the human condition as we know it in the primary world, the Elven presence in Tolkien’s secondary world brings to this debate a contrast unavailable in human history. Tolkien asks in which ways the issue of mortality would be sharpened and made inescapable if mortal Men found themselves living alongside immortal Elves – creatures who, while they can be killed, do not die of age or sickness, and, if killed, can be reincarnated or remain as spirits within the world.

Tolkien’s Elves are fundamentally the same species as Men – both are human in the biological sense that Men and Elves can intermarry and reproduce to have viable offspring (who are then offered the choice whether to become immortal Elves or mortal Men). Elves are also religious kin to Men in that both are ‘children’ of the one God (Elves having been created first). But Elves seem, at the time of this story, to be superior to Men, in that Elves are immortal in the sense defined above. Elves do not suffer illness; they are more intelligent (‘wise’) than men, more beautiful, more knowledgeable and more artistic; Elves also have a much more vivid, lasting and accurate memory than Men.

The question arises in the secondary world: If Elves are immortal and generally superior in abilities, what is the function of Men? Why did Eru (the ‘One’ God) create mortal Men at all, when he had already created immortal Elves? Implicitly, Tolkien is also asking the primary world question why God created mortal and imperfect Men when he could have created more perfect humans – like the immortal Elves?

Tolkien’s answer is subtle and indirect, but seems to be related to the single key area in which the greatest mortal Men are superior to Elves: courage. Most of the ‘heroes’ in Tolkien’s world, those who have changed the direction of history, are mortal Men (or indeed Hobbits, who are close kin to mortal Men); and there seems to be a kind of courage possible for mortals which is either impossible for, or at least much rarer among, Elves. Elves have (especially as they grow older) a tendency to despondency, detachment and the avoidance of confrontation. On a related note, Tolkien hints that Men are free in a way in which Elves are not, and that this freedom is integral to the ultimate purpose of Men in Tolkien’s world – and by implication also in the real world.

C.S. Lewis once stated (albeit from the pen of a fictional devil!) that courage was the fundamental human virtue, because it underpinned all other virtues: Without courage other virtues would be abandoned as soon as this became expedient:

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky." [3]

At any rate, courage seems to be one virtue in which the best of Tolkien’s mortal Men seem to excel.


The Fall of Men

The first question is whether Tolkien’s One God ‘Eru’ originally created immortal Men, who had been ‘marred’ and made mortal by the time of Andreth (and, by implication, our time). This is Andreth’s first view – the mortal woman suspects that Men were meant to be immortal but have been punished with mortality:

‘[T]he Wise among men say: “We were not made for death, nor born ever to die. Death was imposed upon us.” And behold! the fear of it is with us always, and we flee from it ever as the hart from the hunter’ [4].

‘We may have been mortal when first we met the Elves far away, or maybe we were not.... But already we had our lore, and needed none from the Elves: we knew that in our beginning we had been born never to die. And by that, my lord, we meant: born to life everlasting, without any shadow of an end’ [5].

Naturally, this prompts the Christian reader to think of parallels with the Fall of Man and original sin; and this analogy is clearly intended by Tolkien.

Andreth talks of a rumour she has heard from the wise men and women among her ancestors, that perhaps in the past Men committed a terrible but undefined act which was the cause of this marring. The implication, never made fully clear, is that Men in their freedom may have deviated from their original role as conceived by ‘the One’, and been corrupted or intimidated into worshipping Morgoth, or at least into doing his will and in some way serving his purposes. This, it is suggested, may be the cause of Men’s mortality as such, along with a progressive shortening of their lifespan and a permanent dissatisfaction and alienation from the world they inhabit and even their own bodies. In the dialogue, Finrod asks:

‘[W]hat did ye do, ye men, long ago in the dark? How did ye anger Eru?... Will you not say what you know or have heard?’

‘I will not’, said Andreth. ‘We do not speak of this to those of other race. But indeed the Wise are uncertain and speak with contrary voices; for whatever happened long ago, we have fled from it; we have tried to forget, and so long we have tried that now we cannot remember any time when we were not as we are’ [6].


Men’s Lifespan

By contrast to their uncertainty about the origin of mortality, the decline in mortal lifespan caused by Morgoth’s corruption of the world seems certain to both Andreth and Finrod. Later in Tolkien’s history, those Men who help defeat Morgoth are rewarded with a lifespan of about three times Men’s usual maximum, i.e. about 300 years; greater strength, intelligence and height; and a safe island off the coast of Middle-earth on which to dwell (Numenor, Tolkien’s Atlantis).

It seems possible that the enhancements of ‘Numenorean’ Men are simply a restoration of the original condition of Men. Or it may be that these enhancements are compensations of Elvenness, rendering Men more Elven (though still mortal), perhaps with the ultimate aim of a unification of Elves and Men. At any rate, the majority of Numenoreans eventually succumb to corruption and evil, and are destroyed by Eru in a massive reshaping of the world, which drowns the island and the vast Numenorian navy that is landing on the shores of the undying lands.

For Tolkien, it is a characteristic sin of Men to cling to life, and it is this clinging which corrupts the mortal but long-lived Numenoreans who try to invade the undying lands – either in the mistaken belief that they will become immortal by dwelling there, or with the intention to compel the Valar to grant them immortal life.

While Men are characteristically tempted to elude mortality – to stop change in themselves – the almost-unchanging Elves are tempted to try to stop change in the world – to embalm beauty in perfection. This Elven sin is related to the first tragedy of the Silmarillion, when ultimate beauty – the light of the primordial trees – is captured in three jewels; and it later leads to the creation of the Rings of Power, which are able to slow time almost to a stop, and thereby to arrest the pollution and wearing-down of Middle-earth.

As well as having an increased lifespan, Numenoreans surrender their lives voluntarily at the appropriate time, and before suffering the extreme degenerative changes of age. This voluntary death (or transition) at the end of a long life is described in the most moving of the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, when Aragorn (the last true Numenorean) yields his life at will to move on to another world. His wife Arwen pleads with him to hold on to life for a while longer to keep her company in this world; however Aragorn kindly but firmly refuses her request:

‘Let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell!’ [7]

Arwen’s fate is tragic, because she is one of the ‘half-elven’ who may choose whether to become Man or Elf; she chooses to become mortal in order to marry Aragorn and share his fate. However, her resolve to accept mortality at the proper time is undermined by her ‘lack of faith’ in Man’s destiny of life after death. In the appendix, she is portrayed as regretting becoming a mortal instead of an Elf; and as having succumbed to the sin of clinging to mortal life rather than accepting mortality and trusting that there is life after death.

"…and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter than comes without a star." [8]

The half-elven Arwen has failed to embrace the mortal need for courage to underpin all other virtues; and one possible interpretation of this passage is that this has consequences for her fate in the next world.


At Home in the World, or Exiled?

For Tolkien (and Lewis), the sense of exile is a ‘desire’ which implies the possibility of its gratification; in other words, it reflects the fact that Men have indeed been ‘exiled’ from somewhere other than this world.

Finrod makes clear that Elves, by contrast, feel fully at home in the world to which they are tied:

‘Each of our kindreds perceives Arda differently, and appraises its beauties in different mode and degree. How shall I say it? To me the difference seems like that between one who visits a strange country, and abides there a while (but need not), and one who has lived in that land always (and must)’. [9]

‘Were you and I to go together to your ancient homes east away I should recognize the things there as part of my home, but I should see in your eyes the same wonder and comparison as I see in the eyes of Men in Beleriand who were born here’. [10]

Elves therefore care for the world more than Men, and do not exploit nature as Men do, but nurture and enhance the world. And indeed Elves are not truly immortal, since when the world eventually ends, they will die; and to Finrod it seems likely that this death will mean utter annihilation:

"You see us...still in the first ages of being, and the end is far off.... But the end will come. That we all know. And then we must die; we must perish utterly, it seems, because we belong to Arda (in [body] and in [spirit]). And beyond that what? The going out to no return, as you say; the uttermost end, the irremediable loss?" [11]

Partly because of this prospect, the almost-unchanging Elves become increasingly grieved by the ravages of time upon the world, and cumulatively overcome by weariness with their extended lives. Hence the characteristically Elven temptation to try to stop time, to arrest change.

By contrast, Men seem to Finrod like ‘guests’, always comparing the actual world of Middle-earth to some other situation. This opens up the question of Tolkien’s version of ‘the argument from desire’. Finrod thinks that Men have an inborn, instinctive knowledge of another and better world. Hence, he thinks that they never were immortal, but have always known death as a transition to another, more perfect world – not as the prospect of annihilation which Elves face. Thus, he considers the possibility that Men’s ‘mortality’ is ultimately preferable to Elven ‘immortality’.

But even in this world Finrod suspects that the destiny of Men may eventually be higher than that of Elves. He acknowledges that at the time of his debate with Andreth the Elves are the superior race in most respects; but he can envisage a time when mortal Men will attain leadership, and the Elves will be valued mainly for the scholarly and artistic abilities fostered by their more accurate and vivid memories. This projected role of Men will be related to the healing of the world from the evil that was permeated through it by Morgoth.

One possible interpretation of this is that Elves cannot heal the marred world because they are tied to, part of, that world; but that mortal Men may be able to heal it because, although they themselves share the marring of the world, they are ultimately free from that world through death.


Tolkien’s Vision of Heaven

Building on hints by Andreth, Finrod intuits that if things had gone according to Eru’s original plan, there would have been no need for Men. The first-born, immortal Elves would have been the best inhabitants and custodians of an unmarred world, because their very existence was tied to it.

But since the demiurgic Morgoth infused creation with evil at a very early stage, Eru made a second race of mortals – Men – who lived in the world for a while, then passed on to another condition. Because mortals were not tied to the world, they had the freedom to act upon the world in a way that Elves did not. This freedom of Men could be misused to exploit the world short-sightedly; but it could also be used to heal the world, to the benefit of both mortals and immortals alike.

[Finrod]: ‘This then, I propound, was the errand of Men, not the followers but the heirs and fulfillers of all: to heal the marring of Arda’.

Indeed, Finrod perceives that to clarify this insight may be the main reason for their discussion: so that Andreth may learn the meaning of mortality from Finrod, and pass this knowledge on to other Men, to save them from despair and encourage them in hope.

[Finrod]: ‘Maybe it was ordained that we [Elves], and you [Men], ere the world grows old, should meet and bring news to one another, and so we should learn of the Hope from you; ordained, indeed, that thou and I, Andreth, should sit here and speak together, across the gulf that divides our kindreds’. [12]

Andreth suggests that Eru himself may intervene for this hope.

[Andreth]: How or when shall healing come?…To such questions only those of the Old Hope (as they call themselves) have any guess of an answer.… [T]hey say that the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end’.[13]

Finrod cannot at first understand how this could be, and Andreth herself seems to regard it as highly implausible – a wishful dream. But on reflection, Finrod argues:

‘Eru will surely not suffer [Morgoth] to turn the world to his own will and to triumph in the end. Yet there is no power conceivable greater than [Morgoth] save Eru only. Therefore, Eru, if he will not relinquish His work to [Morgoth], who must else proceed to mastery, then Eru must come in to conquer him’. [14]

The Christian parallels are obvious. Indeed, ‘The Marring of Men’ can be seen as part of Tolkien’s lifelong endeavour to make his legendarium (originally conceptualized as a ‘mythology for England’) broadly compatible with known human history, particularly Christian history [15].

Andreth’s hints inspire Finrod to a vision which offers ultimate hope to the immortal but finite Elves as well as to mortal Men:

‘Suddenly I beheld a vision of Arda Remade; and there the [High Elves] completed but not ended could abide in the present forever, and there could walk, maybe, with the Children of Men, their deliverers, and sing to them such songs as, even in the Bliss beyond bliss, should make the green valleys ring and the everlasting mountain-tops to throb like harps’.

‘We should tell you tales of the Past and of Arda that was Before, of the perils and great deeds and the making of the Silmarils. We were the lordly ones then! But ye, ye would then be at home, looking at all things intently, as your own. Ye would be the lordly ones’. [16]

This, then, is Tolkien’s vision of Heaven, pictured in the context of Arda, his sub-created world.


Myth and reality

The conversation of Andreth and Finrod occurs during a lull before the storm of war breaks upon Middle-earth; and Finrod foresees that the next stage of war will claim the life of his brother Elf Aegnor, whom the mortal woman Andreth loved in her youth and loves still. The fragment ends with Finrod bidding Andreth farewell by reaffirming, ‘you are not for Arda. Whither you go you may find light. Await us there, my brother – and me’. Andreth’s destiny lies beyond the world, and Finrod dares to hope that this is true for the Elves also.

In Tolkien’s legendarium, loss or transmission of knowledge is always a matter of concern. The message we take away from ‘the Marring of Men’ is hopeful. We are called to infer that this conversation has ‘come down’ to us today: that it was remembered, recorded, and has survived the vicissitudes of history, possibly because we modern readers need or are meant to know this.

Just as Morgoth’s marring of the World and of Men is analogous to the Christian account of the Fall of Satan and of original sin, Finrod and Andreth’s intuitions and hopes, Tolkien implies, were vindicated in real history by the coming of Jesus Christ. And Tolkien’s sub-creative vision of heaven, as explicated by Finrod, is meant to be taken seriously as an image of true heaven, in which Tolkien believed as a Christian. It is entirely characteristic that Tolkien’s heaven should have a place for Elves as well as for Men.

Tolkien’s story ‘The Marring of Men’ – though so brief a tale – seems to me one of his most beautiful and profound: a product of deep thought and visionary inspiration. It encapsulates nothing less than Tolkien’s mature understanding of the human condition and the meaning of life. Scholars and admirers of C.S. Lewis, who are unfamiliar with Tolkien’s legendarium, may find a way into his magnificent fantasy by reading it as complementary to Lewis’s great idea of ‘joy’ and his characteristic ‘argument from desire’: Tolkien engaged in developing and completing themes which underpin much of his old friend’s best and most serious work.


1. J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth’s Ring: The History of Middle-Earth, Volume X, ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 2002[1993]), pp. 301-366.
2. Humphrey Carpenter (ed.), Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), p110.
3. C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1951), p148.
4. Morgoth’s Ring, p. 309.
5. Ibid., p. 314.
6. Ibid., p. 313.
7. The Return of the King (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974), p. 309.
8. Ibid., p. 309.
9. Morgoth’s Ring, p. 315.
10. Ibid., p. 316.
11. Ibid., p. 312.
12. Ibid., p. 323.
13. Ibid., p. 321.
14. Ibid., p. 322.
15. This is the subject of Verlyn Flieger’s book Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien’s Mythology (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2005).
16. Morgoth’s Ring, p. 319.

*

***


My comments:

I regard JRR Tolkien as one of the wisest and most profound of men, and further I take the above discussion seriously as an attempt - within the subcreation of his Legendarium - to grapple with ultimate matters.

Furthermore, I find his reasoning compelling.

*

Note what he says about the necessary assumptions. In the case of the Elven King Finrod, these assumptions were based on his created nature; angelic instruction; thought; and experience.

In the case of Men (who have not lived among the 'angels' (Valar) as had elven King Finrod; the assumptions would be based on created nature, thought, experience - and any traditions concerning divine 'revelation'.

His conclusion is that the Fall (conceived as a turning away from God, and a worship of the Satanic figure of Melkor/ Morgoth - which is a turning away from love to power) led to fear of death, as a severance of (immortal) soul and (mortal) body which is unnatural and horrible.

Eru's original plan was that this would not have happened, but that Men on willingly accepting death at the end of their time on earth would go (body and soul) to another world (i.e. Heaven) which was out of Time.

Following the fall, and a time of fallen-ness where Men's souls were indeed severed from bodies at death, an alternative plan was devised by Eru whereby he himself would become a Man, and thereby (mystically) enable souls which had left the world without their bodies to be reunited with their proper bodies, using (roughly speaking) the 'memory' of the body which was retained by the soul.

*

This was (Tolkien explains elsewhere) the mechanism for elven reincarnation - a new body was 'regenerated' from the memory of the soul.

But the souls of Men were not like this (the special elven gift was memory), nor was reincarnation the destiny of Men.

After all, the souls of dead Men had left Arda (whereas elven souls remained in Arda), and were in a domain out of Time.

*

Only intervention by Eru could heal this situation, and any healing must allow for the free will of Men (which was part of the essence of Men and the 'reason' or purpose of their creation).

Against this was not just the free will of Men to reject any or all of the assumptions or to prefer power to love; but there was also the fact of the presence of evil in the fabric of the world (the tainting of the created world by Morgoth); the purposive evil of Morgoth himself, his allies (Sauron) and his corrupted servants - Balrogs, Dragons, Orcs; and the opposition of free Men who (each, by choice or assent) took Morgoth as their God.

This is Tolkien's indirect description of the Fall and Resurrection; and his explanation of the need for Resurrection. 

* 

Inter alia, Tolkien's description of Finrod's assumptions is also a description of Faith (belief in the reality of Erus and his nature), Hope (called Estel - by which knowledge of Eru implies goodness of divine purpose) - and the distinctive Christian virtue of Charity (Love, Agape) is implied by the contrast with Pride and Power-seeking which are distinctive sins of the two Falls of Men - the primary fall of the worship of Morgoth in the unrecorded history, and the secondary historical fall of Numenor into pride and power - finally capped by the Numenorean King again reinstating the worship of Morgoth - supervised by Morgoth's priest Sauron.

*

(Edited from an article by Bradley J Birzer:)

In his account of the writing of The Silmarillion, Kilby focused on a discussion between an Elf and a human wise woman. The conversation deals with the possible Incarnation of Eru (God the Father) in the world. How could an author enter into his book without exploding it? How could God enter into His creation without destroying it?

Tolkien had written a note on the manuscript of the conversation stating that—in no uncertain terms—this must serve as a central part of the final, published version of The Silmarillion.

I can state without exaggeration that this conversation explains and describes the Incarnation more expertly and with more beauty than anything I’ve ever read with the important exception of T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding.”

And, yet, pick up your copy of The Silmarillion, thumb through it, and you’ll see no such conversation. As literary heir, Christopher chose to exclude all explicit theological and philosophical discussions, focusing instead on the mythological narrative of the story.

http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/07/tolkien-the-man-and-tolkien-the-myth-maker.html

*

The discussion between and elf and a human wise woman was eventually published in 1993 as part of (and rather inconspicuous-within) Volume Ten of the History of Middle Earth ('Morgoth's Ring') where it is given various descriptive titles in Sindarin and English - In a 2008 essay on the piece I deployed the more user-friendly name of The Marring of Men:

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/heaven-and-human-condition-in-marring.html

I find The Marring of Men to be the most beautiful and moving of all Tolkien's writings which emerged after his death - and it played a very important role in my conversion to Christianity, shortly after writing the above essay.

The fact that Tolkien at one point intended this to become the centre of The Silmarillion, and the fact that it did not, is yet another clarification of my personal antipathy of the 1977 version Silmarillion - and my belief that a new version (or several versions) is needed; drawn from the History of Middle Earth volumes (unavailable in 1977) and including the Marring of Men and the 'second prophecy' of Mandos -

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/what-is-point-of-tale-of-turin-turambar.html

and preferably with much less emphasis of Turin Turambar!

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/tolkiens-epic-fail-tale-of-turin.html

*

From Thomas Traherne - Centuries of Meditations

57


Two things in perfect Felicity I saw to be requisite and that Felicity must be perfect, or not Felicity. The first was the perfection of its objects, in nature, serviceableness, number, and excellency. The second was the perfection of the manner wherein they are enjoyed, for sweetness, measure, and duration.

And unless in these I could be satisfied, I should never be contented: Especially about the latter. For the manner is always more excellent than the thing.

And it far more concerneth us that the manner wherein we enjoy be complete and perfect, than that the matter which we enjoy be complete and perfect. For the manner, as we contemplate its excellency, is itself a great part of the matter of our enjoyment.


58

In discovering the matter or objects to be enjoyed, I was greatly aided by remembering that we were made in God's Image.

For thereupon it must of necessity follow that God's Treasures be our Treasures, and His joys our joys. So that by enquiring what were God's, I found the objects of our Felicity, God's Treasures being ours. For we were made in His Image that we might live in His similitude.

And herein I was mightily confirmed by the Apostle's blaming the Gentiles, and charging it upon them as a very great fault that they were alienated from the life of God, for hereby I perceived that we were to live the life of God, when we lived the true life of nature according to knowledge: and that by, blindness and corruption we had strayed from it.

Now God's Treasures are His own perfections, and all His creatures.


59

The Image of God implanted in us, guided me to the manner wherein we were to enjoy. For since we were made in the similitude of God, we were made to enjoy after His similitude.

Now to enjoy the treasures of God in the similitude of God, is the most perfect blessedness God could devise. For the treasures of God are the most perfect treasures, and the manner of God is the most perfect manner.

To enjoy therefore the treasures of God after the similitude of God is to enjoy the most perfect treasures in the most perfect manner. Upon which I was most infinitely satisfied in God, and knew there was a Deity because I was satisfied.

For in exerting Himself wholly in achieving thus an infinite Felicity He was infinitely delightful, great and glorious, and my desires so august and insatiable that nothing less than a Deity could satisfy them.


60

This spectacle once seen, will never be forgotten. It is a great part of the beatific vision. A sight of Happiness is Happiness.

It transforms the Soul and makes it Heavenly, it powerfully calls us to communion with God, and weans us from the customs of this world. It puts a lustre upon God and all His creatures and makes us to see them in a Divine and Eternal Light. I no sooner discerned this but I was (as Plato saith, In summâ Rationis arce quies habitat) seated in a throne of repose and perfect rest. All things were well in their proper places, I alone was out of frame and had need to be mended.

For all things were God's treasures in their proper places, and I was to be restored to God's Image. Whereupon you will not believe, how I was withdrawn from all endeavours of altering and mending outward things. They lay so well, methought, they could not be mended: but I must be mended to enjoy them.


61

The Image of God is the most perfect creature.

Since there cannot be two Gods the utmost endeavour of Almighty Power is the Image of God. It is no blasphemy to say that God cannot make a God: the greatest thing that He can make is His Image: a most perfect creature, to enjoy the most perfect treasures, in the most perfect manner.

A creature endued with the most divine and perfect powers, for measure, kind, number, duration, and excellency is the most perfect creature: able to see all eternity with all its objects, and as a mirror to contain all that it seeth : able to love all it contains, and as a Sun to shine upon its caves: able by shining to communicate itself in beams of affection and to illustrate all it illuminates with beauty and glory: able to be wise, holy, glorious, blessed in itself, as God is; being adorned inwardly with the same kind of beauty, and outwardly superior to all creatures.

*

From Thomas Traherne - Centuries of Meditations, Third Century

http://www.spiritofprayer.com/03century.php

*

This is the same argument as oft used by CS Lewis - especially in Surprised by Joy; and by JRR Tolkien - especially in On Fairy Stories and The Marring of Men

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2008/09/tolkiens-marring-of-men.html

*

*
It strikes me that one problem is that the West is sick.

I don't mean 'sick' as a metaphor but really diseased, suffering from diseases - perhaps especially Britain which is the most advanced modern society because it was the first. Here there is no resistance to anything anymore. But other places are little better and on the same road.

*

This is the only adequate explanation for how little resistance there is to lies, nonsense, and the crude inversion of good and evil. People have always spouted lying, meaningless evil rubbish; but in the past they weren't believed, they were not cooperated with, they were resisted and fought

Here in the UK, the majority of young beautiful women choose to vandalize themselves with tattoos; half the population are drunk or drugged half the time (and most of the rest wish they were); the population is almost sterile, by choice, and are being replaced by random others - centuries of culture is being dismantled before our eyes, and the destruction is celebrated.

Multiple millions of people do no work or insignificant amounts of work - ever. The people who are productive and do something useful are despised and harassed and demoralized by armies of politicians, manager, administrators and regulators who are professional saboteurs - actively and unceasingly trying to stop them doing anything useful. The highest aspiration is retirement (not working but getting plenty of money to do what you want) and travel (high status serial distraction with the hope of cheap drunkenness and sexual adventures).

*

We have been hit by major disasters: the London race riots locked down the city for days but the cause was concealed and nothing was done; Sir Jimmy Savile - the most praised celebrity of all time - was revealed as a sexual abuser of epic proportions whose depradations were widely known but nothing was done; slavery and trafficking slaves has been reintroduced to the nation which first abolished it and nothing is done; organized systematic rape gangs were known about for more than a decade but nothing was done.

There is nothing, nowadays, big enough or bad enough to galvanize the British to deal with it - or even to remember it.

*

Why? Why have people given-up - en masse?

In the past people were often in scary, dangerous, fatal situations - much worse than now - but they didn't give up. Modern people give up in the face of microscopic pressures; they don't even have enough energy and motivation and integrity to complain! Anything and everything is met with mumbling, grumbling acceptance.

*

Part of it is that the UK is nominally Christian but there are hardly any Christians, and hardly any of the self-identified Christians are real, and hardly any of them are solid.

But even among real and solid Christians there is very little/ no resistance. There are too few in any one place, with too little interaction between them; they cannot support each other enough to make a real difference.

Nobody among the British will just say NO, and stick by it.

*

Yes there is 24/7 propaganda for mostly bad things. yes there is soft power - vilifying, shaming, fines, sackings. But why are we so vulnerable to this stuff? People in teh past faced prison, torture, executions without yielding. Why does almost-everybody consent to the system and the vile, destructive fashions?

Why do we despair and do nothing about it.

*

What this increasingly looks like is a sick society of sick people. An old society, a society of millions on invalidity benefit, tens of millions dependent on drugs - whether they need them or not, of chronic diseases - mental and physical. 

I am not making a Nietzschian point here, I am not yearning for a nation of vigorous blond beasts; I am not despising or hating the sickness of old sick people (after all, I am one of them!). (Modern society is already filled to overflowing with resentment and hatred - it is just that the resentment is feeble, futile, evanescent - hence deniable.)

I am simply stating that there are strong indications that the population of the oldest industrialized society in the world is maladaptive; as individuals and at a group level.

Why? Well all the above is consistent with widespread, near universal, genetic damage; mutation accumulation due fact such as the child mortality rate has fallen from about half to about one percent, and that for six to eight generations the people with the least mutations have had the least children, and those with heavy mutations loads have had the most - also that for several decades the average fertility is well below two children per woman for all classes, and the population of British is shrinking. This is a recipe for eventual mutational meltdown, but on the way to that increasing pathology is inevitable.

So we in Britain, we in the West and East Asia, are a sick society of sick people; and there is nothing that we can realistically do to prevent it; not least because it is caused by what was probably the greatest boon of the industrial revolution - the near abolition of child mortality - which throughout human history has been a major cause of human misery. 

However, it makes a vast difference; it makes all the difference in this world (and the next) how we respond to the facts.

We do not need to be - we ought not to be - what we are now; which is a society of death wishers, a society of time-servers, a passive society of unmotivated hedonists. That we have just given up is because we have as a nation and as a society turned away from God, forgotten God, hate God - and this puts us into a position of weakness unprecedented in human history.

We know in our bones that we are dying, personally and socially - because genetically. We know too that disaster looms. But it is unacceptable to respond by simply trying to get through the intervening time with as as much fun and as little unpleasantness as possible. This attitude doesn't work, it makes everything worse; and it is evil because it not only acquiesces in the destruction of all good things (marriage, family, beauty, honesty etc.) but actively (albeit feebly) promotes evil (sexual hedonism, the marring of beauty and imposition of ugliness, hype and lies and fake denial).

In such circumstances it is not hard to imagine a suicide cult taking hold - even a cult of humane murder on a massive scale; spun as being the only reliable way to avoid future suffering for yourself and those you care about. Because modern secular people regard death as a full stop, an oblivion, and they like the sound of that better than a world of suffering, fear, starvation, disease and violence (which is the world they are working hard to enable).

Therefore, if it is not to become a cult of death, a culture that is dying needs to look beyond death. There is no alternative. Only by looking beyond death can we put a life of disease and decline into a meaningful and purposeful context.

We can only live well in a sick society in the time that remains us (indiviually and collectively) when our mortal lives are seen in context; and context means as not-the-whole thing but a part and a preparation for the whole thing.

No matter how bad things become, and the quantitative scale of a modern collapse would dwarf anything humans have experienced so far, from the individual perspective there can be no suffering or loss that Men of the past have not already experienced - and which some of them have transcended by their faith in God.

*

Where does it begin?

It can only begin with individuals, individual choice, by opening-ourselves to God. We are not going to be rescued; we are not going to have God forced-upon-us and the future mapped-out and ourselves carried-passively-along. 

It all begins with a change of fundamental attitude. Anybody can do it. You don't need to be young, healthy, high status. You can be old, sick and despised.

No matter how sick you are, you can open you mind, you can say yes. You can repent the evils of our time and in yourself. You can recognize the side of Good and join it.

It makes all the difference: the difference between living the cult of death, and living in expectation of eternal life.


*


A note on the concept of 'adaptive'.

The idea here is that modern men have lost some of the most basic and significant adaptive behaviours due to mutant accumulation, due to substantial relaxation of natural selection against mutations. In biology, adaptation is (roughly) that a stimulus leads to behaviour which is (on average) beneficial to survival and reproductive success. Thus, pathology/ disease is pretty-much behaviour that is not adaptive - behaviour that does not contribute to survival or reproductive success.

Adaptations are not natural nor are they spontaneous, but they evolved. Therefore random damage will nearly-always destroy adaptations. What is left when adaptations have been destroyed (partly or wholly) is not another form of adaptation, but is disease - it is (biologically speaking) no good for anything - just as cancer (which is precisely a loss of adaptation) is good for nothing (not even for the cancer itself, in the long run).

Mass maladaptation, mass disease, is possible because of the society of growth in peace, prosperity and plenty. But mass and increasing maladaptation is incompatible with a society of growth in peace, prosperity and plenty; because p,p&p are an achievement, unusual in the history of the world (not the default!) - and because mutation accumulation (maladaptation) cannot even sustain p,p&p but will instead destroy it.

For a while, society has been living off the inertia from the major achievements of the past - but the achievements dried up, and have been first parasitized then actively destroyed.

I am suggesting that in the vast majority of modern humans in Britain - and other developed countries - with respect to many, many of their attitudes and actions, people en masse violate adaptive, evolved behavioural rules which could have been taken for granted at any previous point in history; and this is evidence of multi-system disease; and the situation is getting worse. And that understanding the basic cause of this implies matters will continue getting worse until the basic current form of society (modern society, based on growth I productivity of necessaries) will come to an end.
*

*

If someone was to spray-paint Durham Cathedral with graffiti, or slash all the best paintings in the National Portrait Gallery, or blast a Vuvuzela during the climax of a great operatic performance - we would (or, at least ought to) recognize these as evil acts in their varying degrees; as destructive the Good.

We should not be distracted because deliberately wrecking Great Art, deliberately marring beauty, is somehow 'not as bad' as torturing or killing - wrecking Great Art is bad: that is the point. 

*

The same applies to the human face and body - deliberately to mutilate the human face and body is bad, is destructive of Good, is evil.

It is an act of desecration - a vandalism of sanctity.

And this is an objective fact - not a matter of opinion.

*

(As we all covertly recognize: our very viscera inform us of the fact.)

* 

Even worse when the mutilation is permanent, scarring, cannot be undone.

Even worse when the mutilation is proudly advertized - so that others may be exposed to the act of evil; challenged to accept it, encouraged to emulate it.

*

Even worse when mutilation is normalized - brought into desirable situations in art, TV, movies, drama, news - into cultural institutions; into situations where the mutilation is accepted - perhaps after a struggle, or in face of ignorant hostility and prejudice - or simply made part of the background, assimilated unconsciously.

This is propaganda for evil - and far worse than oneself sinning (sin is inevitable in fallen Men; but the propagation - by favorable association, advertisement, by normalization - of sin is a voluntary act of  strategic evil).

*

Evil cannot be undone, but it can be repented.

However, only at the cost of Pride.

Advertizing, normalizing, boasting of sin is a highly regarded activity in the modern world - by contrast it is regarded as evil to point-out sin, to reject sin, to say that a sin is bad and should elicit shame rather than admiration - because to do so is hurtful - humiliating, even.

But repenting evil hurts, it ought to hurt - it reduces one's self-esteem and status among others to say 'I made a mistake, I did a bad thing'.

But that is what ought to be done.

*