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Originally Posted by davem
But why a 'different stage of imagination', rather than, say, a 'different stage of knowledge', or a 'different stage of understanding'?
Tolkien seems to be implying that rather than see the world, what we do is imagine it.. So, our ancestors 'imagined' the world in the way they did not out of 'ignorance' of the facts about it, but because they were at a particular stage of imagination. Yet, if we are talking about 'stages' that implies that they would have seen the world that way whatever 'facts' they had known about it.
And would Tolkien have considered that stage of the imagination higher, or lower, than our own?
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The two concepts are interconnected, aren't they?
In our ancient history, men knew very little of the world but must still have wondered as to why they were there in the first place and marvelled at the natural phenomena they witnessed. With very little sure knowledge, a curious mind must fill out the blanks with imagination. It's easy to see how bolts of lightning and earthquakes could be interpreted as the works of wrathful gods.
The earth was seen as flat for a very long time. It would have been impossible to imagine a round earth at that time: why, people on the underside would surely fall off. Then, eventually, as more and more observations were contrary to the flat earth theory, it had to be corrected, which opened up the imagination to new mysteries.
In these days, the earth and most everything on it is studied and well understood. Science has plausable theories on everything from the orgin of life on earth to the very first moments of time and existence. Only extremely ignorant westerners could imagine the bolts of lightning as thown by wrathful gods riding flying steeds across the skies or that the world was created by a bearded god sitting on a cloud some 6000 years ago.
I would say that different 'stages of knowledge' precede different 'stages of imagination'; yet the opposite could also be close to the truth. Knowledge can restrict imagination but is probably not possible without it either. We imagine what we don't know. Some leave it at that, others go out to learn the truth.
The imagination of Tolkien was close to escapism I would say. And most fans of his probably agree that it can be nice sometimes to flee the drudgery of everyday life into a magical world of elves and dragons. The greatest quality of Tolkiens works is how realistic he made his illusion, making it much easier to immerse one self into it.