The Middle of What?

[davem]

Originally Posted by skip spence

The world at a stage where people had no knowledge of what was beyond the sea, where the familiar lands are just (presumably) small parts of an otherwise vast and unchartered world of unknown size and orgin. No wonder people came up with strange myths and stories.

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?