[davem]

Originally Posted by Alatar

Would disagree. What exactly did the Elves of the Third Age create that would surpass (in greatness units? ) something created in the Second or First? The swords, Rings, lembas etc are created earlier. One may bake a new batch of lembas, but the recipe is still the same as it ever was.

Well, I suppose this just reflects Elvish psychology. The past was 'perfect' for them. 'Change' of any kind would be seen as change for the worse. This is what's behind their desire to 'embalm' the world, to prevent it changing. It also accounts for their pessimism. Men seek to improve things, make things better, whereas Elves struggle to prevent them getting worse. So, Men are (psychologically) evolutionists, in that they struggle to improve upon the past (putting aside those with a strong 'Numenorean' strain as personified by Faramir), while Elves think in terms of 'devolution' from an ideal.

So, Elves could not make 'better' swords than those made in the past as any alteration in sword design would be a change away from perfection, hence it would go against their whole way of thinking, against their nature, to alter what they had recieved. The Elves of the Third Age have effectively stopped, & are attempting to hold back the tides of change. They cannot make better swords, Rings, Lembas, rope, or anything else, they can only make 'worse' ones. The 'Long Defeat' they fight against is, ultimately, the wearing of Time itself. Time is the enemy, because Time moves them away from the perfection that once was - even if that 'perfection' never really was, & only existed as a 'dream' in the minds of later Elves looking back. Yet that's what they did. Even Feanor's appeal to the Noldor in Aman was to Cuivienen. He offered to take them back to Middle-earth. But when they got there they almost instantly began looking back to Aman.

In short, I don't think we can expectanything else from the Firstborn than that they would refuse to change anything they had inherited. It wasn't so much that they had experimented over the millenia & come up with the best they could possibly make of Swords, Rings, Waybread Boats & Rope, etc, so that there was no point in trying to improve it, it was that what they had was what they had inherited from the past, so it couldn't be improved, only made worse by being made 'different'. They simply weren't going to surrender to their true Enemy - Time itself.

Which brings us, perhaps, to the 'Elvish' strain in Tolkien, because for all he condemns the Elves for their backward-looking he seems to be of the elvish party himself.