in search of areté

[Note: This post originally appeared on May 3, 2006.]

Hobbiton. Shire Year, 1401. - Before beginning the tale of the War of the Ring, as chronicled in The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien presents his readers with a Prologue that introduces Middle-earth to those who perhaps have not read The Hobbit. So rich is the Prologue that even those who have read and re-read the latter find a wealth of information and background concerning pipe-weed, the ordering of the Shire, the finding of the One Ring, and – most importantly – of hobbits themselves.

In the telling of the history and prosperity of hobbits, Tolkien provides the following information and insight into this seemingly insignificant people. After he records how the hobbits first came to the land west of the Brandywine River, he goes on to note: (more…)

They are bad, aren’t they! Most of them from any point of view. The answer to the mystery is prob. not simple; but part of it is that ‘rhetoric’ (of which preaching is a dept.) is an art, which requires (a) some native talent and (b) learning and practice. The instrument used is v. much more complex than a piano, yet most performers are in the position of a man who sits down to a piano and expects to move his audience without any knowledge of the notes at all. . . . But preaching is complicated by the fact that we expect in it not only a performance, but truth and sincerity, and also at least no word, tone, or note that suggests the possession of vices (such as hypocrisy, vanity) or defects (such as folly, ignorance) in the preacher.

“Good sermons require some art, some virtue, some knowledge. Real sermons require some special grace which does not transcend art but arrives at it by instinct or ‘inspiration’; indeed the Holy Spirit seems sometimes to speak through a human mouth providing art, virtue and insight he does not himself possess: but the occasions are rare. In other times I don’t think an educated person is required to suppress the critical faculty, but it should be kept in order by a constant endeavour to apply the truth (if any), even in cliché form, to oneself exclusively! A difficult exercise . . . ” - J.R.R. Tolkien in a Letter to his son Christopher, 24 April 1944

At the age of 77, Tolkien was asked by his publisher’s daughter about the meaning of life. In a letter postmarked May 20, 1969, he said (in part):

So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis:

‘. . . We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour.’

“And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf, as is done in Psalm 148, and in The Song of the Three Children in Daniel II. ‘PRAISE THE LORD . . . all mountains and hills , all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing.’”

- Letters, p 400