The Few, the Proud, the Elf-Friends!

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

This is going to sound absolutely ridiculous, but something that happened this morning made me think of it. There are creatures that have good perception of emotions and intents of other creatures -- like dogs that are able to tell a friendly person from an unfriendly person, and who cannot be fooled by feigned pleasant behavior. One can only presume that they are able to discern cues from the person approaching them -- body language, tone of voice (quite possibly including tones and pitches we cannot hear in our own voices), even scent. There's nothing metaphysical about it; it's merely within the capacity of their natural senses to perceive this. Not all dogs are good at this -- some never were taught or needed to hone the ability -- but some are uncannily perceptive in telling for from friend.

Not to dismiss Legate's intriguing take on things, but perhaps this ability to discern an Elf-friend from... er... Elf acquaintances comes from their naturally keener senses and other mind-related abilities. As with humans, some have better perceptional skills than others.

Well, but this is in no way contradicting what I said. That's actually what I meant. Only, I don't think that the "Elfsight" (as in: the sense which allows the Elves, and perhaps some others, to spot Elf-friends) can be compared to, for instance, a sense of smell on the physical level - only on analogical one. The reason why I call it "metaphysical" is that I definitely cannot imagine it working in any crude material way, now wouldn't that be completely un-Elvish? Like "smelling pheromones of Elvishness", perhaps somebody could phrase it that way and effectively it would be okay in the outcome, but I just cannot associate something so crude and material with the Elves. But let's not start about that, please.

In any case, the point was that if it was just a physical quality, it would be rather difficult to come up with how it's determined. You can explain that all the Elves have some extra sense, but how do you explain that some random Goldberries have that or not? Likewise, I really think there is the connection of the "purity of heart" and the ability to discern the Elf-friends (whatever the definition for it would be from e.g. Pitchwife or Findegil's point of view) - like I said already, I just cannot imagine a bunch of Saurons having the ability to discern Elf-friends. And again, how do you make the "goodness" (of the observer!) "physical"?

So, basically, I don't have anything against Ibrin's interpretation, if it is basically the same thing that I meant - or if meant literally (that there is really a purely mechanical thing like smelling "Elvishness-pheromones"), it is not, in which case I disagree with it