At the same time, the world of Tolkien is still a crossbred one which is only natural because he knew that "no audience can long feel sympathy or interest for persons or things in which they cannot recognise a good deal of themselves and the world of their everyday experience," (Kocher, R., 1977) This paradoxical situation actually has a simple solution. On the one hand Tolkien has created a world of fantasy, has endowed it with peculiar or strange realities and inner laws, and has tried to induce a belief in the whole system; on the other hand his imagination has been restricted by the requirement to remind the reader of his own world, not to carry him too far away, and he has saved himself no trouble in trying to provide his world with a suitable amount of realities, phenomena and moral categories the knowledge of which is inherent in every reader. The solution lies in the fact that this "secondary belief" is not a purpose or a goal in itself, but rather a means which the author has chosen (as different authors choose different genres) to convey his message. As far as the latter is meant for human beings aid not for imaginary creatures, the target, i.e. the reader, must be able to transplant himself into the "secondary world" - Tolkien's Faerie, and therefore the reader must be assured by some elements to feel at home and not be taken to completely new surroundings. Tolkien himself manifestly expected that "secondary words" would combine the extraordinary with the ordinary and the fictitious with the actual. Consequently it is not unlimited imagination but rather the author's capacity for combining the above-mentioned opposites which is essential for a successful achievement.
Tolkien has produced a number of parallels with the real world fulfilling one requirement for creating "secondary belief" and retaining credibility, but in order to maintain it he must also keep an eye to the structural principles, the internal laws of the world he is creating, and therefore has to respect perhaps even a larger set of limitations than a realistic writer. Fortunately, as the Tolkien critic Helms has said, "the limitations, however, bring their own kind of freedom" (Helms, R., 1974) the greatest of which is perhaps in the enormous range in the kind of experiences the author can present. On the other hand, a fantasist is restricted in the ways his characters can react to these experiences because a fantasy world is one of the extremes and, owing to this "holy antagonism" (Helms, R., 1974), the characters can be at a time either good or evil, white or black, the golden mean never comes in. A realistic writer has to face contrary limitations because he can present only experiences which are believable according to common-sense reality but he can choose from an infinitely wide range of responses to a restricted set of experiences. This gives a general (but by no means absolute) rule for all narratives: as to the laws of forms, in realism action is limited, range of reactions infinite, in fantasy range of experiences is infinite, reactions limited. Consequently, the value of a work of fantasy does not depend on the author's skill of presenting reactions but rather on the quality of action, which in its turn is dependent upon "the richness and the complexity of the interrelationships between the action ... and the internal laws ... of the fantasy world." (Helms. R., 1974) The internal, laws of Middle-Earth, i.e. Tolkien's fantasy world, have their own consistency while they may overlap in their effects, and some of them can be abstractly produced:
(1) Middle-Earth is providentially controlled;
(2) intention determins the consequences and results according to the formulae + . + = + and - . - = + which means that a good action with a good objective point produces a good result whereas a bad action with an evil intent or purpose will eventually also bring about a good result;
(3) will and various states of mind, both evil and good, can have objective reality and act as out of physical energy;
(4) moral and magical law have the force of physical law;
(5) proverbial truth finds proof in all experience.
There may be more inner laws in Tolkien's world of fantasy, (cf. Helms, R., 1974) for instance, oaths and curses have effectual consequences, whether given on good or evil purposes, but these five are most consistently followed by the author, although deviations from every law occur at some stages of the narrative.
(1) At several turning points or crucial moments in the series of events Tolkien's protagonists utter, though mostly in an extremely vague manner, opinions and presages that the events in which they participate and all the decisions about a further course of action which ostensibly lie with them, are actually planned from somewhere higher and form only a link in the irrevocable chain of events. (This pertains mostly to his trilogy "The Lord of the Rings".) All intelligent beings virtually come to believe in a universal moral system represented and guarded by a higher order, to which each of them freely contributes without any exact knowledge of what their actual task is and without any clear-cut idea how their purposes and courses of action will eventually work out in the fight against the enemy. In the trilogy it has often been indicated that a planner operates through a definite pattern where the inhabitants of Middle-Earth are only implements in his hand. Actually there is more in this law than Providence: it certainly cannot be identified with predestination because Tolkien never strips his heroes of free will and consequently the law of providential control is - providence + voluntary co-operation = positive effect. Tolkien sometimes gives the idea between the lines that there may be predestination but it is impotent without volunteering co-operators. The structure of that law coincides formally with that of Marxist phiosophy on historical progress and development: social laws find no enactment on their own but depend on the correct or distorted cognition of them on the part of the members of society - progress can be accelerated by cognizant enactment of the laws or it can beslowed down by counter-actions although progress cannot be stopped or reversed. When it is added that in Tolkien's fantasy world providence + counter-action to it = temporary standstill or reversion but never absolute frustration of providential positive ends, then the structural identity is established and the fantastic element boils down to a mutation of real operators in our real world, but retention of formal structure. These two formulae are also relevant to the second law which says that an evil action with a bad intent never produces an absolutely unfavourable result, the maximum it can achieve is to cut down the speed of progress.
Providential control can be illustrated by Gandalf the Wizard's remark to Frodo [1] about the discovery of the One Ring given at the beginning of the trilogy, "I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo [2] was meant to find the Ring and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it." (Tolkien, R., 1966 Vol. I) He also says that "there was something else at work, beyond the design of the Ringmaker" (Tolkien, R., 1966 Vol. I) and it is implied that this vague "something else" is stronger than the evil spirit's (i.e. Ringmaker's) intentions. The reader often gets the impression that Gandalf knows more than he says because if he is not one of the "higher order" he is at least a messenger or representative of the Valar (Angelic spirits under the One who is the creator of all the world) but he is bound by instructions not to impose his will and rather try to persuade, educate, and encourage, if necessary. ("The Silmarillion" actually provides Gandalf's rank in the universal hierarchy.)