Tolkien Quotes: As He Ever Has Judged

“It is hard to be sure of anything among so many marvels. The world is all grown strange.… How shall a man judge what to do in such times?”

“As he ever has judged,” said Aragorn. “Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear… It is a man’s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.”

This brief exchange between Aragorn and Éomer packs a lot of punch. Éomer’s question echoes the lament of anyone in a state of flux. When I think about the world, I wonder what happened to the little self-contained universe I understood as a child. I live in a culture of doomsday technology, corruptly-distributed resources, confused spiritualism, legal genocide and rampant slavery. I live in a place of new paradigms and a destroyed status quo, when What Has Worked for the past hundred years Does Not Work anymore. I live in a world where my parents’ health can be and has been shattered in a second and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. Too often I find myself scrambling to find my feet in a fluctuating life.

Aragorn’s answer once again illustrates Tolkien’s straightforward wisdom: love and evil have always been a part of the present world, and all we can do is set our minds to discovering the way they manifest in our culture and in our lives. If we understand, we can judge what is best. If we can judge, we can act. A discerning man can accept the changes as they happen and continue to move forward, with the faith that anything worth doing requires.

~Lisa Shafter