Middle-earth Connections: Lore of the Rings

and does arise from an apparently good root the desire to benefit the world and others -- speedily and according to the benefactor's own plans -- is a recurrent motive." Art therefore makes use of the natural world, and develops its natural tendencies, whereas the Machine imposes an external (unnatural) will upon the world, or other wills. Tolkien notes that the Elves of Eregion "came their nearest to falling to 'magic' and machinery." In creating the Rings of Power, they used their Art to create a Machine, but it was a Machine which they intended to be used only for preservation, not alteration. Nonetheless, the restraint of Time is a very serious action, contrary to the laws of nature. It is an act of rebellion "against the laws of the Creator." The Rings of Power are thus a paradox: they provide for healing and restoration, but also for an unnatural preservation. The very motive behind the Rings, to delay or prevent the inevitable fading the Elves must suffer, is a rebellious motive. The devices are external to the environments they control, and the (Eregion) Elves did not at first realize the wrong they were doing. They paid a terrible price for their folly. Sauron destroyed their realm and took most of their Rings for himself, when he found that his plan to control them through the Rings would not work. It must be emphasized that most of the aspects of the Machine present in the Rings derive from Sauron, because the intention to use them to control other beings was strictly his own. The combination of Art and Magic is at once both powerful and destructive for the Elves. They achieved a small measure of their ultimate goal, but things never really worked out as they intended. Point 4: The Product of Art and Machine When Sauron took the Seven and the Nine, Tolkien writes, he returned to Mordor (in fact, he was eventually driven back to Mordor by the Eldar of Lindon and their Numenorean allies, who at the time had no idea of what the war was all about). There Sauron "perverted" the Rings, and he gave them out to Dwarves and Men in a new scheme intended to extend Sauron's sway over those races much as he had intended to use them to control the Elves. Tolkien doesn't say exactly how Sauron perverted the Rings, but his ultimate goal was to create powerful lords who

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