Re: Answer to Sally's Question: Elves, Neste

Sally Caves scripsit:

> What was the outcome of the debate?  My question would be "Aren't you Elves
> ever curious about mortality?  Look at me.  I'm dying as I speak to you.
> Where are your Elvish anthropologists?"
Here's part 2 of the Athrabeth precis:

If so, says Finrod, then it can only mean that Men's souls have the
power to carry their bodies with them beyond the limits of the world,
which would mean that unfallen Men were powerful indeed, and that the
wrong done to them was the most terrible of calamities.  He speculates
that there is somewhere another world in which everything has eternal
existence.  Andreth says that if so, Men know nothing of it and guess
little.  Finrod then speculates further that that may have been the
reason for the creation of Men: to be the heirs of the world and in the
end to restore the unfallen state, or rather to create a third state
transcending the fallen/unfallen distinction.

Finrod guesses (correctly) that the Valar do not know what the end of
the world will be like.  Finrod, thinking about the eventual fate of
the Elves, suddenly has a vision of them as a part of the renewed world
after the end -- the historians of the old world for Men, who will belong
to that world as they do not to this fallen world.  The Elves like the
other things of the world will become eternal and unchanging.  Therefore,
their longevity, though it seems hard now, will then be a blessing.

Andreth says that Men have no reason to hope for such a thing; they had
hoped to escape Morgoth, but that hope too is vain.  Finrod explains
[ObConlang] that there are two Sindarin words for "hope":  "amdir",
meaning something good that has a foundation in the known, though it is
uncertain; and "estel" [Aragorn's usename as a child, millennia later]
meaning the hope that does not come from experience but from the very
nature of the Elves as the children of God, whom God will not abandon.
Finrod asks if Men have estel.  Andreth says that most have none, being
under the domination of the Dark Lord, and even those who have escaped
from him, have at most amdir that there is some means of escape from evil.

Andreth says, however, that those "of the Old Hope", who are few but
increasing now that Men see that Morgoth can be defied, believe that God
will enter the world, heal the wound, and undo the marring of the world.
Andreth, however, does not herself believe this, because there is no
evidence of God in the world, and because she does not see how the
Creator can enter his creation, any more than a singer his song or a
painter his picture.  [Cf. Tolkien's "Leaf by Niggle".]  Finrod says
that God is already both inside and outside the world; Andreth replies
that this "being in the world" is meant in a different sense, immanent
not transcendent.

Finrod says that these things are beyond the knowledge of the Elves,
but if God wished to enter his creation, Finrod is sure that he would
find some way to do so, and surely in no other way could the world be
healed as Andreth describes.

This is getting tough.  The remaining 25% tomorrow.
--
Even a refrigerator can conform to the XML      John Cowan
Infoset, as long as it has a door sticker       jcowan@reutershealth.com
saying "No information items inside".           http://www.reutershealth.com
        --Eve Maler                             http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

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