Powers of sight in The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings

In The Hobbit, when the travellers are in Mirkwood and come to cross the magic river (which puts Bombur to sleep when he falls in), the dwarves ask Bilbo to tell them what he can see on the other side of the river. It seems there that Bilbo can see farther and more clearly than the dwarves.

But when the Fellowship is traversing Moria in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf has Gimli go in front with him to lead the party—he is at home in the mines and not likely to get lost—but also, because he has the best eyes in the dark.

Therefore hobbits can see farther and more clearly than dwarves, but dwarves can see better at night. Since hobbits are essentially a race of men, it is likely that men have eyes about as good as hobbits.

It is the elves who have the best eyes. In The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn and Gandalf frequently ask Legolas to tell them what he sees. He sees a bird flying so high that the other cannot even see it as a speck, yet he can tell that it is an eagle. When Aragorn sees the riders of Rohan approaching in the distance, several miles off, Legolas can tell their number and the colour of their hair.

Legolas’s power of sight is a virtue of his physical nature. He has literally better eyes than any of the others, even Gandalf, who though he has many powers is still in his body a man.

Can all the elves see as well as Legolas? I expect not. Most of the elves of Mirkwood are Silvan Elves, descendants of the Nandor who never crossed the Misty Mountains. Legolas comes from Mirkwood, yet he is the son of King Thranduil, and it is known that the kings and leaders of the Silvan elves are often descended from Eldar who had crossed the Misty Mountains and lived in Beleriand in the First Age. I cannot say what precisely is Legolas’s heritage save that he is of a higher, more noble race than most of the elves in Eriador at the time of The Lord of the Rings.

However, there are also elves about who could probably see better than Legolas; though few, there are far nobler elves still in Middle Earth. There are the Calaquendi, the Elves of the Light, very ancient elves who lived in Aman with the gods in the age of the Two Trees of Light. Glorfindel and Galadriel are two of these. They are of nobler race, being less mixed with the Silvan Elves of Middle Earth. But the Elves of the Light also have greater virtue from their time living with the gods, being nourished by the Light of the Trees, so much stronger and more vital than the dim light of sun and moon. Some of this original Light still remains with them and gives their bodies strength unknown to the Elves of the Darkness. No doubt Glorfindel or Galadriel would have even greater power of sight in their eyes than Legolas.

Gandalf also, at times, can see things far off—he even says once that this power is given to him—but his power of sight is of a different nature than elf-sight. Though Gandalf as a wizard is in fact an angelic spirit of a higher order than the elves, he is incarnate in the body of a man. How limited he is to a man’s capabilities is not clear. He is much stronger and more enduring than he appears. As for his eyes, at times he asks Legolas to tell him what he sees, as when they arrive at Edoras in Rohan. But from the citadel of Minas Tirith, Gandalf is able to see Eowyn and Merry wounded on the battlefield far below. It is not easy to tell how much of Gandalf’s power of sight resides in his eyes and how much is a gift of his angelic nature.

But the Elves of the Light have also been raised up almost to the order of angelic spirits. This gives them powers not limited to their bodies; what the hobbits might call ‘magic’, not unlike Gandalf himself, though lesser. Two of the elves have this to an even greater degree: Galadriel and Elrond. Each of them has a power of seeing things far off which is different in kind than Legolas’s keen eyes.

Elrond has some power of seeing, or sensing, things from afar or even before they happen. thus he advises Gandalf not to send Pippin with the Fellowship because of the harm he will do; and he sees truly—it is probably Pippin who stirs up the Balrog and the orcs in Moria by dropping a stone down a well (causing Gandalf’s death); and Pippin also looks into the Palantír, almost disastrously. Gandalf, who has the deeper sense of Providence, is right to allow Pippin to come, because all these events work out to the good: but the point is that Elrond could discern somehow that they would be. He also can tell that there is an evil at work in the Shire long before it comes out in the open.

Elrond’s power of vision has many sources. Through his father Eärendil he is descended from the royal house of Fingolfin, kings of the Noldor—the last declared king was Gil-Galad, but after he was killed by Sauron on the slopes of Mount Doom, it could be supposed that if there is any King of the Noldor it is Elrond. Through his mother Elwing he is descended from Elwë, king of the Telerin elves in Beleriand. Thus he has in him the blood of two races of Elves of the Light, though he himself was never in Aman. But he also has the blood of Melian the Maya, wife of Elwë, through whom true ‘magic’ entered the races of Elves and Men, since she was of the angelic order herself. The blood of Melian has given all the descendants of Eärendel and Elwing seemingly supernatural virtues of spirit and body. Most of the nobility in Men comes from Melian’s blood, through Elrond’s brother Elros, who was King of Númenor: Denethor, Boromor, Faramir, and Imrahil of Dol Amroth all are distantly related to this line, but Aragorn is the greatest of these. Both Aragorn and Elrond have powers of healing, and perhaps some power of perceiving things far off in space and time. But Elrond’s power is enhanced perhaps by his Ring, one of the three great Elven rings.

Galadriel has the greatest power of seeing. She, like Elrond and Gandalf, can somehow sense things far off. But she also has her Mirror in which she shows Sam and Frodo a vision of things far away. She herself is of very great race, probably the oldest Elf in all of Middle Earth, daughter of Finarfin of the house of the Noldorin kings. And she has a Ring, possibly the greatest of the Elven rings. Galadriel is, after Gandalf, the most ‘magical’ of all the good characters in The Lord of the Rings, and it is probably from the combination of her native nobility as a very high Elf of the Light with her wielding of the Ring of Adamant. These together give her a power of seeing not unlike that of the Palantiri.

The Palantiri, the seeing-stones, seem to work like eyes and not like the more intuitive vision which Gandalf and Elrond sometimes reveal. Aragorn uses the Orthanc-stone to see the Black Fleet sailing to Pelargir, many hundreds of miles away, and it seems that Denethor was shown many sights but he did not discern their true meaning. The Palantír thus grant sight but not understanding. They are unique in that they work independent of the user’s nature, high or low, good or evil. One has to contend with other wills who are using the stones; but it seems that if Sauron had not seized upon him even Pippin might have been able to use the stone to see things far off. These stones, created by Féanor, operate more like our technology, and can be used for good or evil. Two of them fall into the wrong hands, Sauron and Saruman, and are used to accomplish great mischief.

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We can thus rank the powers of purely visual sight (not counting the Palantiri) in Middle Earth:

1. Elves.

Elves of the Light (Glorfindel and Galadriel).
Grey-Elves of the race of Beleriand (Legolas and Thranduil).
Silvan Elves (the elves of Mirkwood).

2. Men and hobbits.

3. Dwarves (but they can see better in the dark than elves, men, or hobbits).

However, some characters have greater powers of sight not strictly connected to their eyes. These are Galadriel, Gandalf, and Elrond. The greaetst of these is Galadriel.