Fate and Free Will

§5. *Thus if a man set out on a journey with the purpose of finding his enemy, and the purpose then of doing this or that (pardoning him / asking his pardon / cursing him / seeking to slay him): That purpose governs the whole process. It may be frustrated by “chance” (—in fact he never met him—) or it may be helped by chance (—in fact against likelihood he did meet him), but in the latter case if he did evil he could not [?throw] the blame on “chance”.

§6. Umbar thus relates to the net-work of “chances” (largely physical) which is, or is not, used by rational persons with ‘free will.’ That aspect of things which we might include in Fate—the ‘determination’ that we each carry about with us in our given created character (which later acts and experience may modify but not fundamentally change) was not included in Umbar by the Eldar; who said that if it was in any way similar it was on a different ‘plane.’ But the ultimate problem of Free Will in its relation to the Foreknowledge of a Designer (both of the plane of Umbar and of the Mind and the blending of both in Incarnate Mind), Eru, “the Author of the Great Tale,” was of course not resolved by the Eldar.

[§7. But they would have said it is the continual clash of umbar, the ‘chances’ of ambar as a fixed arrangement which continues to work out inevitably (except only for ‘miracle’ a direct or mediate intervention of Eru, from outside umbar and ambar), and purposeful will that [?ramifies] a story [or] tale (as an excerpt from the total drama of which Eru is the Author or as that Drama itself). Until the appearance of Will all is mere preparation, interesting only on a quite different & lower plane: like mathematics or observing the physical [?events] of the world or in a small way the workings of a machine. Will first appeared with the Ainur/ Valar, but except for Melkor and those he dominated their wills being in accord with Eru effected little change in Ambar or deflected Umbar.] [5]

§8. They said that, though this likeness is only a ‘likeness,’ not an equation, the nearest experience of the Incarnates to this problem is to be found in the author of a tale. The author is not in the tale in one sense, yet it all proceeds from him (and what was in him), so that he is present all the time.* Now while composing the tale he may have certain general designs (the plot for instance), and he may have a clear conception of the character (independent of the particular tale) of each feigned actor. But those are the limits of his ‘foreknowledge.’ Many authors have recorded the feeling that one of their actors ‘comes alive’ as it were, and does things that were not foreseen at all at the outset and may modify in a small or even large way the process of the tale thereafter. All such unforeseen actions or events are, however, taken up to become integral parts of the tale when finally concluded. Now when that has been done, then the author’s ‘foreknowledge’ is complete, and nothing can happen, be said, or done, that he does not know of and will/or allow to be. Even so, some of the Eldarin philosophers ventured to say, it was with Eru.

§9. *If one ‘character’ in the tale is the author then he becomes as it were only a lesser and partial picture of the author in imagined circumstances.

The note originally ended here, about a third of the way down the page; but at a later point (judging by the change of writing implement), Tolkien added one more very rough and faint paragraph (readings marked here as uncertain are for the most part very uncertain indeed), apparently applying the simile of “the author of a tale” to his cosmogonic myth:

§10. [? ?] Music of Ainur ancient legend from Valinorean days. Firs[t] stage the music or ‘concert’ of voices and instruments—Eru takes up alterations by [?the] created wills (‘good’ or bad) and adds of His own. Second stage the theme now [?transformed is provided with] a Tale and presented as visible drama to the Ainur [?bounded but great.] Eru had not [?complete] foreknowledge, but [?after it His] foreknowledge was [?complete] to the smallest detail—but [?He] did not reveal it all. He veiled the latter part from the eyes of the Valar who were to be actors.

[5] This paragraph, interpolated from the first version of the note, continues with a partial sentence: “Ambar is complex enough, but only Eru who made and designed both Ambar (the processes of Eä).” Tolkien interrupted the sentence at this point to provide an etymological note on Eä, which reads: “Ea ‘it is’ only = the total of Ambar: the given material and its processes of change. Outside Ea is the world/sphere of aware purpose and will.” This was followed at the bottom of the page by an etymological note on the Quenya word for ‘will’ :

?DEL: Q. lēle, v[erb] lelya (lelinye). To will with conscious purpose, immediate or remote. To be willing, to assent, consent, agree—quite different, for it partakes of will but is an additional [?accident]. A man may say ‘I [?wish], I agree, I will’ to some proposition of another without special purpose of his own (but he may also have reflected that it fits in with some design of his own and so agree to it as he might not otherwise have done).

The top of the next page begins the second version of the text.