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Originally Posted by davem
... as 'creator' [Eru] seems more of an artist - his great concern seems not to be that what is produced be good in any moral sense, but rather that it be 'beautiful'. To the extent that morality comes into it at all it seems to be Eru's annoyance with Morgoth's attempted spoiling of his 'opera'.
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This view is based on a misunderstanding. All that is Good is of a piece. Before Evil enters creation, a thing that is beautiful is by definition good. It is only after evil enters creation that this harmony is ruined with such dissonances as beautiful evil and ugly good. Tolkien expresses this universal truth with an aesthetic pallet rather than a moral one; the truth he expresses does not change because he uses a different pallet.