excellentia et merito divina, quae demonstrant angeli miris
modis: utrum visa sua facili quadam et praepotenti iunctione vel
commixtione etiam nostra esse facientes, an scientes nescio quo modo
nostram in spiritu nostro informar visionem, difficilis perceptu et
difficilior dictu res est."]

[Footnote 210: See Lotze, _Microcosmus_, bk. viii. chap. 4, and other
places. We may perhaps compare the Johannine [Greek: kosmos] with the
Synoptic [Greek: aion] as examples of the two modes of envisaging
reality.]

[Footnote 211: Eriugena is, no doubt, the more correct spelling, but I
have preferred to keep the name by which he is best known.]

[Footnote 212: Erigena quotes also Origen, the two Gregorys, Basil,
Maximus, Ambrose, and Augustine. Of pagan philosophers he puts Plato
first, but holds Aristotle in high honour.]

[Footnote 213: Stoeckl calls him "ein faelscher Mystiker," because the
Neoplatonic ("gnostic-rationalistic") element takes, for him, the
place of supernaturalism. This, as will be shown later, is in
accordance with the Roman Catholic view of Mysticism, which is not
that adopted in these Lectures. For us, Erigena's defect as a mystic
is rather to be sought in his extreme intellectualism.]

[Footnote 214: "Dum vero (divina bonitas) incomprehensibilis
intelligitur, per excellentiam non immerito _nihilum_ vocitatur."]

[Footnote 215: This is really a revival of "modalism." The unorthodoxy
of the doctrine becomes very apparent in some of Erigena's
successors.]

[Footnote 216: _De Div. Nat._ i. 36: "Iamdudum inter nos est confectum
omnia quae vel sensu corporeo vel intellectu vel ratione cognoscuntur
de Deo merito creatore omnium, posse praedicari, dum nihil eorum quae de
se praedicantur pura veritatis contemplatio eum approbat esse." All
affirmations about God are made "non proprie sed translative"; all
negations "non translative sed proprie." Cf. also _ibid._ i. 1. 66,
"verius fideliusque negatur in omnibus quam affirmatur"; and
especially _ibid._ i. 5. 26, "theophanias autem dico visibilium et
invisibilium species, quarum ordine et pulcritudine cognoscitur Deus
esse et invenitur _non quid est, sed quia solummodo est._" Erigena
tries to say (in his atrocious Latin) that the external world can
teach us nothing about God, except the bare fact of His existence. No
passage could be found to illustrate more clearly the real tendencies
of the negative road, and the purely subjective Mysticism connected
with it. Er