[Raynor]

Originally Posted by davem

I don't think its that Men had no ability with magic, but that magic was not an innate ability - it was a 'power' they could take to themselves, against the will of Eru. This is what leads them to evil - they cannot use magic with 'authority'. Thus it will always tend to corrupt them, whatever their motivation in using it.

I think it is a double-faceted issue. First there is the motivation; a nazgul falls to the dark side "sooner or later – later, if he is strong or well-meaning to begin with" (cf The shadow of the past); also, Bilbo was safe for a good while from the corruption of the ring (and later saved altogether) because he showed pity in possessing it. The other side would be the mere strength of mind of the user: the "pre-power" rings were just dangerous to Men, not corrupting, in and of themselves - also, Aragorn does resist Sauron's influence when he using the power of the palantir.

Tolkien stated that 'magic' is an aspect of the Machine, a seeking after technology to control & coerce things/people, hence the Ring is the ultimate Machine within Middle-earth, & the other Rings are lesser Machines.

Well, he does distinguish between kinds of magic, esspecially in relation to the one of the elves (cf Letter #131):

"I have not used 'magic' consistently, and indeed the Elven-queen Galadriel is obliged to remonstrate with the Hobbits on their confused use of the word both for the devices and operations of the Enemy, and for those of the Elves. I have not, because there is not a word for the latter (since all human stories have suffered the same confusion). But the Elves are there (in my tales) to demonstrate the difference. Their 'magic' is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations: more effortless, more quick, more complete (product, and vision in unflawed correspondence). And its object is Art not Power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation"

Art attempts to (sub) create a secondary world in the mind, while the Machine is an attempt to alter the world

I think that the elven Art too alters the world, but it still remains "good", as noted above - they weren't "bulldozing the real world, nor coercing other wills".

All technology (which in Middle-earth includes Rings, Palantiri, etc) is 'evil' in that its purpose is to remake the world in the user's own image - even if that was not the intent behind their making.

"It would no doubt be possible to defend poor Lotho's introduction of more efficient mills" - letter #155 .

Originally Posted by Kath

The Witch King and Isildur were powerful people, and could see how magic would enable them to gain more power and more control,

I don't think that Isildur desired more power and control through the ring (which would have been a sign of coruption, which I doubt, since in his scroll he is all too willing to leave the ring to his heirs). He considered the ring "of all the works of Sauron the only fair" (cf. Council of Elrond, FotR).

Surely magic can only corrupt if there is the potential for corruption, and there need to be circumstances to create this potential.

Yet this potential exists in all Ea (even for the valar, who could at least err as a result, cf Letter #212, or show possesiveness, such as in the rising of the Pellori Mountains, cf Myths Transformed), since evil/corruption have been sub-creatively introduced and futhermore there is the actual marring of Melkor.

Looked from this point of view, there is a notion in Tolkien, that you could help things with technology - although it would end up in sacrifices'

Concerning the real-world, he has a rather hard stance:

Originally Posted by Letter #75 to Christopher

There is the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare. Unlike an which is content to create a new secondary world in the mind, it attempts to actualize desire, and so to create power in this World; and that cannot really be done with any real satisfaction. Labour-saving machinery only creates endless and worse labour. And in addition to this fundamental disability of a creature, is added the Fall, which makes our devices not only fail of their desire but turn to new and horrible evil. So we come inevitably from Daedalus and Icarus to the Giant Bomber. It is not an advance in wisdom! This terrible truth, glimpsed long ago by Sam Butler, sticks out so plainly and is so horrifyingly exhibited in our time, with its even worse menace for the future, that it seems almost a world wide mental disease that only a tiny minority perceive it.

[As far as outcome of the culmination of evil use of the machine, he has little doubt: (Letter #96)Well the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter - leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines.]

In his fantasy realm, his attitude is a bit more nuanced; he is more tolerant, in some cases, to the use and users of technology/Machine; Sauron "was not indeed wholly evil, not unless all 'reformers' who want to hurry up with 'reconstruction' and 'reorganization' are wholly evil, even before pride and the lust to exert their will eat them up", cf Letter #153; the elves of Eregion themselves, (even though compared to the catholics who would make tools, which given the circumstances, "are pretty certain to serve evil ends") are not necessarily to be blamed, even if aware of the consequences of their actions.

However, he also states (Letter #155):

"The Enemy, or those who have become like him, go in for 'machinery' - with destructive and evil effects - because 'magicians', who have become chiefly concerned to use magia for their own power, would do so . The basic motive for magia - quite apart from any philosophic consideration of how it would work - is immediacy: speed, reduction of labour, and reduction also to a minimum (or vanishing point) of the gap between the idea or desire and the result or effect. But the magia may not be easy to come by, and at any rate if you have command of abundant slave-labour or machinery (often only the same thing concealed), it may be as quick or quick enough to push mountains over, wreck forests, or build pyramids by such means. Of course another factor then comes in, a moral or pathological one: the tyrants lose sight of objects, become cruel, and like smashing, hurting, and defiling as such."

[In matters of writting style, it is also stated in the Notion Club Papers, that "real fairy-stories don't pretend to produce impossible mechanical effects by bogus machines. " - a role which is no doubt left to magic itself ]