nd some of his works were adjudged to the flames. His most
important book is entitled "De Divisione Nature."

Erigena's philosophy rests upon the observed and admitted fact that
every living thing comes from something that had previously lived. The
visible world, being a world of life, has therefore emanated necessarily
from some primordial existence, and that existence is God, who is thus
the originator and conservator of all. Whatever we see maintains itself
as a visible thing through force derived from him, and, were that force
withdrawn, it must necessarily disappear. Erigena thus conceives of
the Deity as an unceasing participator in Nature, being its preserver,
maintainer, upholder, and in that respect answering to the soul of the
world of the Greeks. The particular life of individuals is therefore a
part of general existence, that is, of the mundane soul.

If ever there were a withdrawal of the maintaining power, all things
must return to the source from which they issued--that is, they must
return to God, and be absorbed in him. All visible Nature must thus
pass back into "the Intellect" at last. "The death of the flesh is the
auspices of the restitution of things, and of a return to their ancient
conservation. So sounds revert back to the air in which they were born,
and by which they were maintained, and they are heard no more; no man
knows what has become of them. In that final absorption which, after
a lapse of time, must necessarily come, God will be all in all, and
nothing exist but him alone." "I contemplate him as the beginning and
cause of all things; all things that are and those that have been, but
now are not, were created from him, and by him, and in him. I also view
him as the end and intransgressible term of all things.... There is a
fourfold conception of universal Nature--two views of divine Nature, as
origin and end; two also of framed Nature, causes and effects. There is
nothing eternal but God."

The return of the soul to the universal Intellect is designated by
Erigena as Theosis, or Deification. In that final absorption all
remembrance of its past experiences is lost. The soul reverts to the
condition in which it was before it animated the body. Necessarily,
therefore, Erigena fell under the displeasure of the Church.

It was in India that men first recognized the fact that force is
indestructible and eternal. This implies ideas more or less distinct
of that which we now term its "correl