not, which can and cannot be. He is the similarity of the similar, the
dissimilarity of the dissimilar, the opposition of opposites, and the
contrariety of contraries. All discords are resolved when they are
considered as parts of the universal harmony." All things begin from
unity and end in unity: the Absolute can contain nothing
self-contradictory. And so God cannot be called Goodness, for Goodness
is opposed to Badness, and God is above this distinction. Goodness,
however is a more comprehensive term than Being. There may be Goodness
without Being, but not Being without Goodness; for Evil is the
negation of Being. "The Scripture openly pronounces this," says
Erigena; "for we read, God saw all things; and _not_, lo, they were,
but, lo, they were very good." All things are, in so far as they are
good. "But the things that are not are also called good, and are far
better than those which are." Being, in fact, is a defect, "since it
separates from the superessential Good." The feeling which prompts
this strange expression is that since time and space are themselves
onesided appearances, a fixed limit must be set to the amount of
goodness and reality which can be represented under these conditions.
Erigena therefore thinks that to enter the time-process must be to
contract a certain admixture of unreality or evil. In so far as life
involves _separateness_ (not distinction), this must be true; but the
manifold is only evil when it is discordant and antagonistic to unity.
That the many-in-one should appear as the one-in-many, is the effect
of the forms of time and space in which it appears; the statement that
"the things which are not are far better than those which are," is
only true in the sense that the world of appearance is permeated by
evil as yet unsubdued, which in the Godhead exists only as something
overcome or transmuted.

Erigena says that God is above all the categories, including that of