To
davem: I agree with your last post (not the last short, the long one). I was not speaking of the moral point of view, nor about the state where the good and evil already exist (where the setting of
narfforc's wonderful story takes place), I was speaking of a state where evil does not exist at all, saying that such a state would be theoretically possible (the original question concerned "unspoiled" Ainur - I was trying to show that in Ainulindalë, evil does not have to exist until the "fall" - concretely, Melkor's fall. At the beginning there is one choice of evil, the model situation of "fall", before which everything was good, then the evil can repeat until the eschatological Second Music, where "...the themes of Ilúvatar shall be played aright, and take Being in the moment of their utterance, for all shall then understand fully his intent in their part, and each shall know the comprehension of each...". The time between, where evil exists, is the moment where everyone can learn, grow, make moral choices as you said, and so on. For more comparison, cf. my signature, for example
).