On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 14:30:55 -0400 (EDT), John Klein <zarkon at illrepute.org> wrote: > According to the Letters, everything in Middle Earth (including Elves > and > Wizards) grows old over time and dies. I'd pull up a cite but I don't > usually bring my copy to work. This is a pretty natural outgrowth of > Tolkien's Catholicism (which is, of course, the underpinning for the > entire enterprise). Disease I'm less sure about. Except that it is religion which is the basis that despite appearances, humans have a huge advantage over those who appear immortal - and that is that humans go to heaven. That is a basis of Western mythology. Even Harry Potter knows this. -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/