Dragons - How did they come to be?

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by davem

Personally, I feel that the biggest mistake Tolkien made was getting side-tracked into this ultimately futile attempt to create a logically consistent philosophy/science for his secondary world - it could only (as CT pointed out) lead to the complete unravelling of that world, because too much of the earlier stuff could not sustain being forced into such strict constraints.

Now you make a good point there. I'd have to disagree though; although his ambition to make his secondary world consistent to both its own internal logic and to the logics of the real world we live in ultimately proved futile, it was also this very ambition which made his works so rich and wonderful to explore.