Which Vala tripped Gollum?

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Sarumian

What he didn't expect, as it seems to me, is that The Ring's final "intention" was not only to return to its Master but to destroy him in the end - because self-destruction is inherent to evil as the example of Melkor shows. Dancing Gollum provided an excellent shortcut to destruction of Sauron and three others who used to bare The Ring, so The One didn't miss the chance. But it was neither a mere chance nor Eru-From-Machine.

If you're going to make that leap though, you might as well say that Sauron's impetus for diffusing his power into an inanimate object was also willfully self-destructive. That, because the "will" of the Ring was in effect Sauron's own essence. Evil may destroy itself in the end; in fact Tolkien's Middle-earth seems rife with examples of that. That doesn't mean though that evil desires its own end. Quite the opposite: Ungoliant, Saruman, and Shelob cling to whatever life is there for them. Sauron too rebuilds himself each time his physical body is "killed", a little weaker and bound to the world with every reincarnation. That doesn't stop his desire to live in the world, though.