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Smeagol was a good hobbit. A good friend, and fine fishermen. He was kind and generous. I imagine that on many occasions he would come into the villiage with a basket full of fish and laugh with delight as he handed them out to hungry hobbit children.
But smeagol had a weakness, as with all who walk in this world, and that weakness was his will. The power of his will, by chance or design, was much less than that of other hobbits. And so the Ring chose him. The Ring appeared to Deagol, drawing him, and then revealed itself to Smeagol, and through the passage of his will entered his mind and heart. It was the Ring that murdered Deagol. It was the ring that filled Smeagol with lust and anger. But, and I believe that this touches on the fundamental beauty of Tolkiens moral vision, in the end the powers of good moved also within Gollum, for it was by and through the acts of Smeagol under the influence of the Ring itself that Sauron was destroyed and all Middle-Earth was saved. Gollum saved Middle-Earth. Not by choice of his, certainly, but neither was it then or now either fair, right, or just to suggest that poor Smeagol withstand and overcome, alone, the full omnipotent and overwhelming power of Sauron himself. For men, death is the 'gift of Eru to men'. To hobbits, who knows? But the fear of death has wrought great evil enough in the World. Death to Gollum would have been a reward, a liberation, a gift to one who had struggled alone against Sauron all those years, with no concievable way of helping himself for the greater part of his will was in Sauron's keeping. To his credit- and Can you believe? What strength of heart! To the very end he resisted the evil Sauron put in his heart. He LONGED to be good. He fought so hard. It was a manifest part of the wisdom of Gandalf and the Folly of Sauron that in the very Moment that Gollum's will finally broke and his will become completely beholden to the power of evil, that in that very fact lay the Victory of Good over evil and, as evil oft shall evil mar, "the magnitude of his folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash" and Gollum 'accidently' toppled into the Cracks of Doom. If accident you call it. But there are other powers at work in Middle Earth
This I consider to be revealed universal truth, yea, divine, and it moves me to tears.
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