The Purpose of Life According to J.R.R. Tolkien
In 1969, Camilla Unwin, daughter of publisher Rayner Unwin, asked J.R.R. Tolkien to help her with a school project by giving an answer to the question, “What is the purpose of life?” After a fairly lengthy letter, Tolkien gets to the heart of his response: “So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.”...
