What breaks the enchantment?

[HerenIstarion]

Originally Posted by davem

whence does this desire to be enchanted arise, & why do we seek the experience? Why is there any art at all?

You're good at tough questions

Finrod asks the question too:

'For if you do not know, how can we? But do you know that the Eldar say of Men that they look at no thing for itself; that if they study it, it is to discover something else; that if they love it, it is only (so it seems) because it reminds them of some other dearer thing? Yet with what is this comparison? Where are these other things?

And eventually answers it (up to a point):

'Is it, then, a vision of what was designed to be when Arda was complete - of living things and even of the very lands and seas of Arda made eternal and indestructible, for ever beautiful and new - with which the fëar of Men compare what they see here? Or is there somewhere else a world of which all things which we see, all things that either Elves or Men know, are only tokens or reminders?'

We seek and compare.