The Nature of Middle-earth

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  In light-giving things all the stars and all heavenly lights were included, except the Moon. The Quendi however seem to have guessed (and later been confirmed in it) that Anar the Sun and chief light-giver (Kalantar) of Arda was especially concerned with Arda and was far greater than any others because it was far nearer, though still very far away. Also they appear to have known or guessed that the Moon (Ithil) was not a light-giver, but a reflector. KAL = light from a light-giver (in Arda primarily from the Sun): ÑAL = reflected light. Certain stars (no doubt those we call planets) and among them especially Venus, which they called Elmō (and later mythologically Eärendil), they early observed were “wayward” and altered their places with regard to the “far-stars” (fixed stars). These they called companions of the Sun and thought them quite small heavenly bodies – derived from the Sun.

  In their primitive mythology they thought that early in the time of Arda (long before it had been made habitable) the Valar during their strife with Melkor for the government of Arda, discovering the danger of darkness, which favoured the secret machinations and works of Melkor, had made the Moon (some thought out of a part of “Nether Arda”, some thought bringing it from outside the realm of Anar) to reflect the light of Anar and reduce the darkness of NIGHT.

  This recapitulation and expansion likewise ends at the bottom of the page; and again Tolkien starts anew, on the following sheet, with another and still more “scientific” explanation:

  TEXT 1A

  The words for NIGHT, TWILIGHT, DAY, or their forms and applications in Elvish languages, require for their understanding the primitive Quendian imagination of the “shape” of Arda (our Earth) and the passage of the Sun (Anar); and also for their changes in the divergent Eldarin tongues a knowledge of the Elvish language.

  The Quendian imagination of the shape of Arda and of the visible Heaven (Menel) above it, was due to the acute minds of a people endowed with sight far keener than the human norm. It was partly astronomical and “scientific”, but crossed with a mythological or poetic talent. Even before their first acquaintance with the Valar they had evidently constructed a picture mytho-astronomical of the world, which was in some respects far nearer to our recent knowledge and theory than might be expected. This “picture” endured in their minds and coloured their myths even after the learned and most scientific among the High-elves who dwelt with the Valar had, or so it may perhaps be presumed, learnt far more the scientific truth (or what we now regard as the truth).

  Their “imagination” was thus not properly a flat-earth cosmology; and it was geocentric only as regards the Sun, Moon, and certain stars (“companions of the Sun” or wayward stars = our planets). The “Solar System” – Sun, Moon, and wayward stars – was properly called Arda ‘the Realm’,[6] but Arda was commonly used of the Earth as the habitation of Elves and Men, to which the Sun etc. were tributary. The Earth or ‘Middle-land’ (Q. en(en)dor) was apparently conceived as spheroid (major axis 3, minor 2) with the major axis lying West > East. There was no childish pictorial myth of its supports: it was set there by the Maker (or his agents, and there remained by their will). It was not possible for terrestrial animals, nor Elves and Men, without wings, to reach the West and East Poles or the uttermost North or South, because it was cut by a deep circular chan[nel]

  Tolkien interrupts the text here, mid-word, above the following representation of the elliptical spheroid just described, its West and East Poles, a dot indicating its center-point, and perhaps a rough indication of the “deep circular channel” at its edges:

  Tolkien was however still not quite finished with his elaborations, writing “PTO” after the interrupted word, and starting one more reconsideration on the verso:

  was conceived as an elliptical surface longer (3) than broad (2), its longer axis lying W–E. It was not flat, but rose up to its central point gradually. It seems to have been imagined as having an under-portion of the same shape (nether Arda) which could not be inhabited since, not knowing of gravitation, the lower surface was supposed to be bare, solid and [?trackless,] and all unattached things (save only mist) would fall off. Later it was represented as an elliptical spheroid of [?some nature]. But

  Here Tolkien’s attempts at presenting a “mytho-astronomical” account of the early Elvish conception of Arda was interrupted, at the start of a sentence, for (it seems) the last time, save for a final accompanying figure:

  This again shows an elliptical Earth with a major East-West axis, and indicates its central high-point. There is no indication in these papers what the western and northern circles indicate, or the dot labelled “k”; but it can be conjectured that the circle to the extreme west indicates the abode of the Valar in Aman, and that perhaps “k” stands for Kuiviénen, the ‘Water of Awakening’, which in the Annals of Aman is said to lie “far off in Middle-earth, eastward of Endon (which is the midmost point) and northward” (X:72). If so, the northern circle may indicate Melkor’s early northern abode, Utumno.

  TEXT 2

  Like the preceding text, this discussion is associated with an adjacent etymological note on an Eldarin base, which itself is reminiscent in its terminology to texts 1A and 1B above:

  √LIK: ‘glide, slide, slip, drip’, applied to dew, water, [?watery] liquid or half-liquid substance (as sap, etc.). From this was derived the word *linkwe (Q. linque) ‘light’ as conceived as an ethereal substance independent (when once emitted) of the light-giver from which it emanates. This was preserved also in T. limpi, but not in Sindarin, where it was used only for ‘dew’. *phuinē, its opposite (material substance), Q. fuine, became the ordinary Sindarin word, fuin, for night, between the twilights but including the darker parts of these. In Sindarin (which still conceived “light” and “dark” in the same way) the words used were: ‘dark’ dû or dú(wath); ‘light’ glae/glaegal (√S. glay-).

  Limlight, modernized from Rohanese Limliht (as in Story of Eärnil), which had no connexion with R. lim ‘limb’, but was a “translation name”.[7] The original Sindarin name was Limhír; and evidently lim- was translated by R. līht and combined as a gloss with older lim-, leading to R. Limliht(ēa).[8] But in what sense (līht ‘not heavy’ or līht ‘bright’) is not now clear; nor is the original meaning of the Sindarin certain.

  Some older spellings, e.g. Limphîr, suggest that the first element was originally S. limp (n.) < *limpi < C.E. *liŋkwi (n.), Q. linque (n., adj.) ‘(bright/clear/gleaming) liquid’. This was applied (in Quenya) to dew (or to fine rain in sunshine); in Sindarin to pools or rills of clear clean water. It was probably in origin a “mythological” word – referring to the primitive Elvish conception of “light” as an actual substance (emitted by light-givers, but then independent), though ethereally fine and delicate. (Its opposite was *fuinē, C.E. *phuįnē = the thin shadowy cloud of twilight and darkness that quenched *linkwi.) The Rohirrim enquiring the meaning of Limhir might well [have been] told it meant ‘clear, bright’; but that there was some uncertainty was suggested by the unusual, in Rohan, preservation of the old name + a gloss.

  Another possibility is that the name really contains C.E. *slimbi, S. lhim, Q. hlimbë ‘sliding, gliding, slippery, sleek’ – used often implying sleekness, a shiny or gleaming surface, or quick movement of swiftly moving or flowing things.[9]

  II

  THE PRIMAL IMPULSE

  The title is taken from Tolkien’s cover page to a bundle of two texts (with draft materials), which reads:

  Primal Impulse

  “Spirit”

  Fragments, incomplete, concerning “The Primal Impulse” and conceptions of “Spirit” and origins of terms for it in Elvish languages.

  The first text, concerning “The Primal Impulse”, is presented in this chapter; the second, concerning “Spirit”, is presented as text 2 in chap. XIII, “Spirit”, in part two of this book.

  The first five pages after the cover sheet are torn half-sheets of candidates’ examination script pages from University College Cork, Ireland, where Tolkien was an
external examiner at various times throughout the 1950s (see TCG II:578). The sixth sheet is a single sheet of unlined paper. The text written on these sheets is all in black nib-pen, in a hand at points calligraphic and at others very hasty. Comparison of the text, particularly in points of terminology such as “pattern” and Q. erma ‘prime substance’ and nassi ‘materials’, with “The Converse of Manwë with Eru”, presented as text 1 of chap. XV, “Elvish Reincarnation”, in part two of this book, indicate that they are closely related and that this text likewise dates from c. 1959.

  The text exists in two versions, called here A (the earlier) and B (the later). Preceding A is a single page of increasingly rough draft workings. B is a fair manuscript that follows A as emended closely, but ends before A does. I thus give here first text B, with citation in the notes of all significant differences with A as first written and as emended, and with the draft. I then give the preceding text A in full from the point where the later text B stops, again with citation in the notes of all significant differences with the draft.

  TEXT B

  The “prime impulse”, of which the total unfolding is the Great Pattern (Erkantië),[1] having continuous life. This life will not be co-extensive with the Tale of Arda;[2] for as Arda began with the Erma [‘prime substance’] and then the nassi [‘materials’],[3] before the entry of the living things,[4] so doubtless the Great Pattern will end sooner, leaving the nassi, and they will be reduced to the Erma, until the Tale ends as it began.[5] Yet while it continues the Erkantië is unbroken and unceasing. Many points of its growth may cease and proceed no further: this is when a living thing perishes before it has produced any offspring or successor.[6] But the whole will not cease until such time as all living things then surviving shall no longer produce living offspring.[7]

  This might happen by catastrophe, in which all living things perished;[8] or by the cessation of the impulse to generate as the Great Pattern worked at last towards its completion. But, since the pattern of any one living thing is not held to have ended until the embodiment is destroyed or dissolved, the Great Pattern could not strictly be said to have ended while still any living thing lived and endured, even if it did not generate. On the other hand the Elves are said to be “immortal within Arda”, which should mean, as it is understood, that they will endure to the utter end of Arda. Thus it may be that Men and all other races of living things will perish and fail to generate, whereas (as seems likely since the process may be seen in operation) the Elves will long before the End have ceased to generate, and their bodies will have been consumed by their fëar.

  But others hold – and their view seems to observe more clearly what is known by lore and experience of history – that this is not a true account of the beginning or ending of life in Arda. They maintain that Ermenië does not belong to Eä (and therefore not to Arda). It must be referred to the uttermost beginning: the “Theme of Eru”, as He first propounded it, before the Ainulindalë in which the Spirits whom He had made and instructed cooperated in the elaboration and working out of the Theme. Thus the Ermenië (which is a ‘Device of Eru’)[9] being before the Ainulindalë is also before Eä (the Realization).[10]

  For it is clear in such lore as we have received from the Valar that they set in motion the unfolding of different living patterns at many different points in the Ainulindalë, and therefore this was repeated in Eä. Within Eä we have then not one single Ermenië or Great Pattern, but a number of early or Major Patterns (Arkantiër).

  The text ends here, about a third of the way down an otherwise empty page. Text A however continues:

  TEXT A

  For it seems clear in such lore as we have received from the Valar, that they started the unfolding of living patterns at many different points in the Music, and so also in Eä – only so can we understand the power which the Valar certainly have and certainly exercised in days of old, of making things with life corporeal[11] – as if one should set many springs flowing in different places.[12] These would not be related in history nor proceed from one fount; they would be akin or alike only through the nature of water, and because each stream would perforce obey the laws of the coherence of Eä, that are alike for all things, though directing them variously according to the situation of each. (As for instance all streams would flow downwards unless hindered, and wind swifter or slower according to the figure of the land.)

  Thus we may observe the great complexity of corporeal life in Arda. Derived ultimately from the Ermenië of Eru, we have the “devices (or designs) of the Valar”, separate each in time of conception and first effecting, whether coming successively from one of the Valar, or coming from more than one. These are the “major patterns” that we have spoken of.

  Their number none but the Valar can know. These are not rightly called “akin” (unless by later mingling), for they are related only as proceeding from the same mind (as of one Vala) or from like minds (as of more than one of these), and their differences are given not developed within and by the operation of Arda. But these “major patterns” (arkantiër) developing in Arda will diverge whether by the design of their beginners, or by the varieties caused by the stuff of Arda which they must use, into different but similar groups of descendants. These are truly akin and members of races or tribes or families or houses. At last and in our time it is beyond the skill of any but the Valar to distinguish the likenesses due to the likeness of the minds of the Valar from those due to descent in Arda.[13]

  And beyond this we have ever over All, Eru. That he introduced new things into the Music (not in the Theme) we are told; for thus began the conception of Elves and Men. (The Dwarves are a case rather of the separate beginnings by the Valar, though [? unless] Eru tolerated and blessed it.)

  That he has never done so in other cases (of corporeal life or of incarnate) or that he never will do so again, none can say. The Valar report no such [?intrusive] things in the Music other than the coming of the Children. But since Eru was not bound by the Theme, nor by the Ainulindalë (as made by the Ainur), it would be rash to assert that He is or will be bound by Eä realized; since He is outside Eä but holds the whole of Eä in thought (by which it coheres).[14] Some of those things that appear suddenly in History and [?continue] then in obedience to Eä (or soon cease to be [?seen]) may indeed be due directly to Eru. (These things are called the signs of the Finger of Eru.)[15]

  Now in most living things (not all) succession is by [?breeding], and by the mating or union of two. So those that mate, or [?bear] must be akin. It is possible therefore that those that may mate and produce offspring are akin by descent. Those that may not or do not do so are not akin however they may resemble others because of the kinship of their beginners. Yet even among the “kin” mating seems to require no very great sunderance of branches. So [?what seems but??? be akin] by descent [?though] remotely. Little is known of this. But we do know some things which are nonetheless not easy to understand. For instance we know that the First Born and the Second Born may mate, though this has rarely been done, and as for the High Elves, the Eldar, only twice. In Middle-earth unless tales be now [?] thrice: Beren/Lúthien, Idril/Tuor, Ancestors of Imrahil. We must say that it was the will of the Beginner of these two streams of life (Elves and Men), that is Eru, that it should be part of the corporeal nature to be capable of marriage and begetting – for certain purposes of the Tale, and no doubt only in the greater of the Eldar.[16]

  Therefore (though Eru’s power is inestimably greater and his will free)[17] it may well be that other beginners made interbreeding part of the capabilities of their respective streams or descents. Study will show maybe that by interweaving its pattern with an earlier, the earlier might be refreshed, and new variety come to being.[18]

  But Eru even in intruding the Children took as their shape a form [?that] though altered and refined, resembles in less or even in great degree the forms of beasts. The Children are not “akin” by descent with the beasts therefore but are related closely in the thought of Eru to them, and w
ith the beasts the Children have ever felt kinship, even akin.

  The fëar of the Elves and Men (and Dwarves via Aulë, Ents via Yavanna) were intrusions into Eä from outside. As the Valar were sent into Eä.[19]

  III

  POWERS OF THE VALAR

  This typescript text occupies both sides of a single sheet of the same University College Cork, Ireland, examination script pages as used for “The Primal Impulse”, with which it is closely related, and it also likely dates from c. 1959.

  Powers of the Valar[1]

  The Valar had power to endue things that they designed with corporeal life; but they could not make things with independent minds or spirits: sc. they could not make things of equal order, but only ones of lower order. In ultimate truth they did not in fact “make” even corporeal life, which proceeded from Eru. But they had assisted in the general design of Eä, and severally, in different degrees and modes, in the production from the erma (or prime substance) of things of many kinds.[2] The idea of life and growth came from Eru, but the Valar, under Him, devised the shapes and forms of living things. When Eru gave being to this design, in general and particular, and it became Eä, unfolding in Time, He set in motion life and growth, or those processes which would in time lead to this. But when he permitted the Valar to descend into Time, to carry out in Eä (or reality) the things that they had designed in thought, then viewed in Time they appeared to make things which were alive. Indeed it is held that being themselves in Time they experienced the making as a new thing, differing in this experience little, save in degree of power and art, from the makers or artists among the Incarnate. Neither they nor the Incarnate could make things utterly new; they could not “create” after the manner of Eru, but could only make things out of what already existed, the erma, or its later variations and combinations.