I ask you all to be patient with me for a few minutes. An
accusation of intolerance and suppression of truth has been levied
against the Church, and thus against me. I do not hide my motives
from you. I seek to defend the Church, its teachings, and its
actions. I cannot approach Saruman's arguments without bias. My
limited mortal mind does not allow me to do so, since I am a
member of the Church and stand accused alongside it. I applaud
Saruman's beautiful reasoning and his search for objectivity in
spite of the fact that he belongs to the order of Vastar. Indeed,
he has proven himself to be one of the great thinkers of our time
by not resorting to blind defense of his ideals, but rather,
considering the merits of those opposed to his ideals and showing
a great openness towards the arguments of his perceived oppressors.

My defense of the Church is met by another of my mortal limitations.
I am not among the Divine, and cannot proclaim any new absolute truths
for you to ponder. At best, I can echo that which They have already
so graciously revealed to us. I am not among the Church hierarchy,
and cannot echo Church teachings and ideologies infallibly. I beg
of you to not look upon my shortcomings as the shortcomings of the
Church, for indeed, they are not. I am not among the physically
strong. I am not among the skillful tacticians that roam our land.
I will not utter threats and insults against you, as you may be
accustomed to hearing, for I am a weak woman and an unskilled
fighter, and my words would go unfulfilled. I am not among the
great orators, and cannot express my thoughts to you with great
clarity or prestige. If only I could write as Saruman, and reveal
to you the incredible potential of human creativity! However, if you
will still grant me your patience, you must bear with my coarse style
and uninspiring ideas. I cannot speak to you either as you are
accustomed or as you deserve, and it is indeed a great honor that any
single one of you would pay me any heed.

I wish to present to you two theses--one, that there is a difference
between the style of rhetoric sometimes known as "sophism" and pure
debate, and that, indeed, government is a natural, beneficial, and
necessary entity. First, the question of sophism.

Debates are usually categorized by a series of premises (read:
assumed rational serving as the basis of an argument), logical
deductions from these premises, and a conclusion, which is ultimately
related back to the issue at hand. For this reason, a formal debate
is often judged not by use of a judge's intuition, but rather, by the
use of a flowchart. Thus, the grandiosity of a skilled debater can
be ignored in favor of the arguments he makes. It does a debater
(or, for that matter, any orator) an injustice if we allow reason to
be lost in emotion, and thus, I am certain that Saruman will support
me in my effort to clarify his post.

Saruman opens his post with statements such as "democracy is
dictatorship" and "In a dark age, even the smallest spark offends the
eyes of minds festering in the dank blackness of disuse." You will
notice that these statements are without premises, deductions, or
conclusions--or even definitions or applications. Indeed, since
Saruman is such a great orator, he will happily tell you that those
were merely words to catch your attention and make his long post
enjoyable (or at least tolerable, for those of you who care little
for long posts). Do not insult a man of such great intelligence by
mistaking those for statements of any true worth. This may seem
like a meaningless point to prove, especially since many of you have
the intelligence to make such distinctions on your own, but I feel
that at least having it in writing will help us in our examination
of Saruman's true debate.

With the critical eye that all of you bear (and Saruman, in his
quest for truth, will encourage you to use), we see that everything
before the second paragraph of the section entitled "The Cause" can
be dismissed as sophism (albeit beautiful sophism). I present for
our reexamination, the beginning of Saruman's debate:

Society, in the anarchist conception, is merely the
epiphenomenon of individuality across the many instances of mortalkind.
As such, society is not a thing in itself. As a thing that lacks
essence, talk of the needs of society is futile and unproductive. When
society is placed before the individual, the individual, an existing
thing, is sacrificed for that which does not essentially exist.

I understand that not all of you are blessed with philosophy lessons,
especially the kind that one would pursue only for the sake of
knowledge, rather than defense. Thus, I will present to you a series
of definitions that should aid our analysis.

Epiphenomenon--A secondary phenomenon that results from and accompanies
another. Or, to state it in other terms, a pattern of accidentals in
a body.

Accidental--A trait of a body that is perceived by the senses but not a
necessary component of the body itself (i.e. the roughness of wood
[wood that is sanded and polished is still wood] or the color of a dye
[if you were to change the color of a dye by mixing or diluting it, it
is still a dye]). Generally, accidentals are seen as the features that
allow bodies of the same essence to be distinguished as individuals.

Essence--That which both defines the nature of a body and gives it its
accidentals. All trees share in the essence of a tree, even though
some are tall, some are short, some have leaves, some have needles, some
are healthy and vibrant through Druidic care, and some are drained from
Necromantic extermination. They are distinguishable, but are all still
trees.

That painful process out of the way, let us consider Saruman's (and
Estach's) assertion that society does not exist in essence. We will
take Shallam as the prototype, since it is this society in particular
that is under question. Two accidentals of Shallamese society are an
opposition to the ideals of Chaos, Evil, and Darkness and a positive
alignment. The amounts of each of these vary from person to person. Not
all Shallamese are Seraphic and actively seek converts, but there is
still a general pattern among Shallamese. For this to qualify as an
epiphenomenon (and thus, not real), this must be nothing but a
coincidence (or an accidental caused by an accidental, which doesn't
occur among rational beings without reflecting essence). I propose
as a hypothesis that the essence of an Achaean society is its code of
laws. All Shallamese are forbidden to kill creatures of good alignment
and to complete quests that aid those of evil alignment, as states in
Shallamese law. This is enforced by punitive actions also stated in
the law. Thus, the law creates a society which bears a pattern of
accidentals, such as alignment. Similar statues showing the rejection
of Chaos, Evil, and Darkness can be shown through the exclusion of
Occultists, Maldaathi, and Shamans from citizenship.

Now ponder for a moment if the law of Shallam were to be drastically
altered. Only Shallamese can readily recognize other Shallamese.
Citizens of the other cities recognize them by their common alignments
and compatible ideologies. If Shallam were suddenly overrun with
Occultists and Maldaathi and went on city-sponsored bashing trips of
Moghedu, would anyone recognize a Shallamite? Indeed, would it continue
to be Shallam in anything but name? Thus, we can safely say that all
societies with a code of laws does in fact exist in its own right, and
the question about the benefits of government can be addressed without
fear that our efforts will be in vain.

I now present the second of Saruman's contentions:
Fundamentally a rational being, the nature of the mortal individual can
only be expressed through the expression of that nature. I stand for the
free expression of reason in its many forms. Realizing that obedience is
the abnegation of freedom and reason, I call for a world without
government. Democracy and republicanism, the political zeitgeist of our
time, are inherently dictatorial. The irrational fears of those who have
been robbed of their reason are ameliorated at the expense of the
freedom of those who retain their wits. The democratic cities and the
Church have become the organized expressions of dependency and want of
responsibility. I declare my freedom by asserting the primacy of free
will, ethical choice, and responsibility. Government, a hindrance to
these principles, must be dissolved.

A skillful debater will very rarely make an error in logic. Thus, when
evaluating Saruman's ideas, we must instead look for false premises.
Unfortunatly, this can only be done statement-by-statement. I will
accept his first premise, "Fundamentally a rational being, . . . of
that nature," without reservation. Discarding his sophism, we come
to his hypothesis (the dictatorship of Achaean democracy). Again,
the rest of the paragraph must be discarded. Later we find:

In order to address this question, we would be wise to seek our
advantage. If ethics is an expression of reason, it follows that ethical
individuals are intelligent. Unless intelligence is limited to but a few
individuals, we must assume that there are many other individuals
sufficiently intelligent to live ethically, who, nevertheless, do not
live ethically. These individuals, expressing their lack of ethics,
support the existence of government. My task, it seems, is to shake
these individuals from their slumber.

With this, we are able to fully extract Saruman's argument. First, we
find "ethics is an expression of reason," the first of his false
premises. The Logos Himself has answered this question in response to
another debate. Morality is not a subjective thing. Morality does not
require one to agree with the ethical system in place over every single
sentient Achaean. In fact, it does not even require an understanding
of it. Killing a Theran child is an evil act, regardless of one's
mental disposition. A government such as Shallam's will limit the
number of evil acts done in the world by its very nature (see above).
Thus, Shallam and the Church do not spread Evil, but Good. Notice how
the remainder of the contention is absurd without this premise. Thus,
his
hypothesis does not stand, and we cannot judge governments in general,
most especially that of Shallam and the Church, to be evil. Therefore,
it is not desirable to live free of government and society--only free
of society which does not encourage ethical behavior by its very
essence. Saruman puts forth two more contentions, but each uses the
premises of morality through ethics and the need for anarchy as their
basis.

I thank all of you who have actually read this far. I am not the
great orator that Saruman is, but all of us, orators or otherwise,
must remember that the Gods Themselves have revealed to us that
morality and goodness, like truth itself, is unchanging, absolute,
and eternal.

P.S. In many of Saruman's bouts of sophism, he accused the Church of
smothering the truth. Before even giving the slightest bit of consent
to such a lie, one should remember the bond between the Lady Lorielan
and the Church. We can also see through this that the fullness of
knowledge and reason will lead one to the Light just as surely as the
self-evident morality of Sapience will.

Voice of the Angels, Linnia Sa'Rithven

Penned by my hand on the 8th of Scarlatan, in the year 331 AF.