"You do not belong here" -- The presence of Men in Faërie

 

...fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being. Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.

On Fairy-stories ⁋ 10, p. 32 (Flieger & Anderson edition)

Reading these words over and over across the years, I have come to conclude that Tolkien did not regard the world as disenchanted, as we often hear it called. To him everything but us was naturally a part of Faërie. We must be enchanted in order to be "contained" in that "realm or state." So, does this mean that we mortals are normally unenchanted, not normally a part of Faërie as everything else in this world is? Or we were once enchanted, but have since become disenchanted by the Fall and expulsion from Paradise, or more mundanely by materialism and positivism and the industrial revolution? 

I don't have the time to sort through all of this right now, but something else Tolkien has said makes me think that he would have answered that we were not normally a part of Faërie. In the Atrabeth Finrod ah Andreth Finrod says of the fëa (soul) and hröa (body) of mortal Men:

‘But what then shall we think of the union [of fëa and hröa] in Man: of an Indweller [i.e., fëa], who is but a guest here in Arda and not here at home, with a House [i.e., hröa] that is built of the matter of Arda and must therefore (one would suppose) here remain?

(Morgoth's Ring p. 317)

Every other living creature lives and dies with this world, as does every other piece of creation, because this world is "the realm or state in which [they] have their being." In this world, which is coterminous with Faërie, we mortal humans are no more than guests. Faërie is not our home. Or at least it is not the home of our fëa.

As the birch tree in Faërie says to Smith in Smith of Wootton Major: "You do not belong here. Go away and never return!" (Smith, extended edition, p. 30).