Editing Valinor (section)

=== Lost home ===

{{further|Decline and fall in Middle-earth}}

Phillip Joe Fitzsimmons compares ''The Silmarillion's'' faraway Valinor, forbidden to Men and lost to the Elves, though it constantly calls to them to return, to Tolkien's fellow-[[The Inklings|Inkling]], [[Owen Barfield]]'s "lost home". Barfield writes of the loss of "an Edenic relationship with nature", part of his theory that man's purpose is to serve as "the Earth's self-consciousness".{{sfn|Fitzsimmons|2016|pp=1–8}} Barfield argued that rationalism creates individualism, "unhappy isolation ... [and] the loss of a mutual relationship with nature."{{sfn|Fitzsimmons|2016|pp=1–8}} Further, Barfield believed that ancient civilisations, as recorded in their languages, had a connection to and inner experience of nature, so that the modern situation represents a loss of that state of grace. Fitzsimmons states that the lost home motif recurs throughout Tolkien's writings. He does not suggest that Barfield influenced Tolkien<!--cf Lewis's "bandersnatch" ... nobody did that-->, but that the ideas of the two men grew from "the same time, place, and even social circle".{{sfn|Fitzsimmons|2016|pp=1–8}}