"Morgoth's Ring" or Sauron's Ring?

[Angry Hill Troll]

Fingolfin you remember correctly about Sauron's desire to dominate the creatures of Arda. The quote is from the same section of Morgoth's Ring as most of the ones in my first post.

Eventually [Sauron] also squandered his power (of being) in the endeavor to gain control of others. But he was not obliged to expend so much of himself. To gain dominion over Arda, Morgoth had let most of his being pass into the physical constituents of the Earth...Sauron, however, inherited the 'corruption' of Arda, and only spent his (much more limited) power on the Rings, for it was the creatures of earth, in their minds and wills, that he desired to dominate.

It's clear from the quote that Sauron couldn't possibly have gained control over the physical world (he wasn't strong enough by himself), but also he didn't need to, since Morgoth had 'done it for him'. It doesn't seem clear, if Sauron had the means to try to control the physical world and Morgoth hadn't already done so, what Sauron would have done. He might have just concentrated on Arda's inhabitants.

One characteristic of Tolkien's universe seems to be that power always has to come from somewhere (ultimately from Eru's creation of the Ainur and of Eä), and that once the power has been destroyed (or more accurately, dispersed) it's very hard to get back. For this reason Arda ends up being 'entropic' in the sense that in each age the power (of both good and evil) is less than in the previous one. An example is following the destruction of the Trees and the theft of the Silmarils, there doesn't seem to be the option of Yavanna just growing two more Trees (she did it once, after all) and Fëanor making a new set of Silmarils, and everybody being happy again. So partly for this reason it seems somewhat strange that Sauron would be able to increase his power by making the Ring, without the 'extra' power coming from some other source (such as Morgoth's dispersed power).