What sort of creatures do the goblins appear to be?

"Goblins are inherently evil in the world of The Hobbit. They are "cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted." They love making "ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once," and "wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them" (4.22). In other words, they like murder and darkness and mechanical things. By contrast, good people such as the hobbits and the elves like songs and nature and artistic things. Tolkien isn't too subtle: the different races of Middle-earth have moral characteristics that seem to be built into their genetic codes."