Who Is Like the Wise Elf? - Page 8
© Michael Martinez
The Wise are credited with discerning or ferreting out truths behind events and mysteries. The Wise of Tol Eressea thus speculate that Orcs are bred from ancient Elves. The Wise (of Middle-earth) suspect that the Necromancer may be Sauron or one of the Nazgul returned. The Wise are the chief lords of the Eldar. They must act as the judges of the Eldar, and not just their intelligence agency. The Wise are therefore something like the ancient Hebrew Judges in pre-Davidic Israel. The Wise discern the threats to the Eldar, choose how those threats are to be met, and lead the Eldar in their wars against whatever threatens them.
If the Wise depend upon a leader-follower bond to distinguish who is among the Wise, then it should be no wonder that only Elves are ever referred to. Men, even Numenoreans, would not be able to establish such a bond. The secretive and jealous Dwarves have their own customs, but probably would not invest their strength in communal leaders. Ents don't seem to have had much in the way of sub-creative faculties. So, among Rational Incarnates (Elves, Dwarves, Men, Ents), only the Elves could develop a class of leaders who would be collective judges and guardians of the communal wisdom. The Wise are a very Elvish concept, and the greatest among them would have to be "the chief lords of the Eldar".
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