es
into God, they do not lose their identity, but preserve it in a higher
state of being."

Creation he regards as a necessary self-realisation of God. "God was
not," he says, "before He made the universe." The Son is the Idea of
the World; "be assured," he says, "that the Word is the nature of all
things." The primordial causes or ideas--Goodness, Being, Life, etc.,
_in themselves_, which the Father made in the Son--are in a sense the
creators of the world, for the order of all things is established
according to them. God created the world, not out of nothing, nor out
of something, but out of Himself.[217] The creatures have always
pre-existed "yonder" in the Word; God has only caused them to be
realised in time and space.

"Thought and Action are identical in God." "He sees by working and
works by seeing."

Man is a microcosm. The fivefold division of nature--corporeal, vital,
sensitive, rational, intellectual--is all represented in his
organisation. The corruptible body is an "accident," the consequence
of sin. The original body was immortal and incorruptible. This body
will one day be restored.

Evil has no substance, and is destined to disappear. "Nothing contrary
to the Divine goodness and life and blessedness can be coeternal with
them." The world must reach perfection, when all will ultimately be
God. "The loss and absence of Christ is the torment of the whole
creation, nor do I think that there is any other." There is no "place
of punishment" anywhere.

Erigena is an admirable interpreter of the Alexandrians and of
Dionysius, but he emphasises their most dangerous tendencies. We
cannot be surprised that his books were condemned; it is more strange
that the audacious theories which they repeat from Dionysius should
have been allowed to pass without censure for so long. Indeed, the
freedom of speculation accorded to the mystics forms a remarkable
exception to the zeal for exact orthodoxy which characterised the
general policy of the early Church. The explanation is that in the
East Mysticism has seldom been revolutionary, and has compensated for
its speculative audacity by the readiness of its outward conformity.
Moreover, the theories of Dionysius about the earthly and heavenly
hierarchies were by no means unwelcome to sacerdotalism. In the West
things were different. Mysticism there has always been a spirit of
reform, generally of revolt. There is much even in Erigena, whose main
affinities were with th