Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/544

Rh 524 E R I E R 1 is nought. Essence participate3 in goodness that which is good has being, and is therefore to be regarded as a species of good. Life, again, is a species of essence, wisdom a species of life, and so on, alwajs descending from genus to species in a rigorous logical fashion. The ideas are the eternal causes, which, under the moving influ ence of the spirit, manifest themselves in their effects, the indi vidual created things. Manifestation, however, is part of the being or essence of the causes, that is to say, if we interpret the expres sion. God of necessity manifests himself in the world and is not without the world. Further, as the causes are eternal, timeless, so creation is eternal, timeless. The Mosaic account, then, is to be looked upon merely as a mode in which is faintly shadowed forth what is above finite comprehension. It is altogether allegorical, and requires to be interpreted. Paradise and the Fall have no local or. temporal being. Man was originally sinless and without distinction of sex. Only after the introduction of sin did man lose his spiritual body and acquire the animal nature with its distinction of sex. Woman is the impersonation of man s sensuous and fallen nature; on the final return to the divine unity, distinction of sex will vanish, and the spiritual body will be regained. The most remarkable and at the same time the most obscure por tion of the work is that in which the final return to God is handled. Naturally sin. is a necessary preliminary to this redemption, and Scotus has the greatest difficulty in accounting for the fact of sin. If God is true being, then sin can have no substantive existence; it cannot be said that God knows of sin, for to God knowing and being are one. In the universe of things, as a universe, there can be no sin ; there must be perfect harmony. Sin, in fact, results from the will of the individual who falsely represents something as good which is not so. This misdiiected will is punished by finding that the objects after which it thirsts are in truth vanity and emptiness. Hull is not to be regarded as having local existence ; it is the inner state of the siuful will. As the object of punish ment is not the will or the individual himself but the misdirection of the will, so the result of punishment is the final purification and redemption of all, even the devils shall be saved. All, how ever, are not saved at once ; the stages of the return to the final unity, corresponding to the stages in the creative process, are numer ous and are passed through slowly. The ultimate goal is dcifaatio, thcosis, or resumption into the divine being, when the individual soul is raised to a full knowledge of God, and where knowing and being are one. After all have been restored to the divine unity, there is no further creation. The ultimate unity is that which neither is created nor creates. Editions of the De Divislone Natnrcc have been enumerated above. The work has been very ably translated into German by Noack, /. S. E. iiber die EinXl milling der Natur, bcrsetzt und mit eincr Schliissabhandlwng, 3 vols., 1874-76. Monographs on his life and works are numerous : the best are St Rene Taillandier, Scot. Erigene et laP M. Scot., 18^.3; Christlieb, Lcbcnu. Lthre d, J. S. E, 1860 ; Huber, J. S. E., &quot;1861 ; Kaulich, Spekula/.ivc System des J. S. E., 1860 ; Stockl, De Joh. Scoto Erigena, 1867. See also the general works on scholastic philosophy, especially Haureau, Stockl, and Kaulich. For English readers a most admirable resume is given by Maurice, Medic.cval Phil., pp. 45-79. (R. AD.) ERIGONE. In the Attic myth of Dionysus, Erigone is the daughter of Icarius, who, having received from Dionysus the gift of wine, shares it with some shepherds, who, drinking it undiluted, fancy themselves poisoned, and having murdered Icarius, throw his body into a well. Guided by her dog Mirira (the glistening one), Eiigone whose name, like that of Protogeneia (see ENDYMION), denotes one born in early morning discovers the crime, and hangs herself. After her death she is said to have been translated to the constellation which the Latins called Virgo. ERINNA, a Greek poetess, the contemporary and friend of Sappho, was probably a native of Rhodes or the adjacent island of Telos, and was born about 630 B.C. Although she died at tb.fi early age of nineteen, her poems were amongst the most famous of her time. Of her best known poem, called HAa/am/ (the Distaff), which contained 300 lines, only 4 lines are now extant. It was written, in a mixed dialect of Dorian and Eolian. Three epigrams in the Palatine anthology are also ascribed to her; but two of the^e are possibly spurious. Another poetess of this name is said to have nourished in the age of Demosthenes, but her existence is matter of considerable uncertainty. The Eriuiia fragments were collected in Bergk s Poetae Lyrici Greed (Leipsic, 1867). ERINYES, the Greek name for the beings whom tlm Latins called Furise, Furies. They were especially the avengers of iniquity, and, as such, acquired a character so fearful that those who had need to speak of them called them the Eumenides, or merciful beings, to win from them the pity which they were but little supposed to feel. The name Erinyes cannot be explained from the Greek language ; but in the Hymns of the Rig-Veda constant mention is made of Saranyu, who there is the Dawn whosf: light steals across the heaven, revealing the things ot darkness Of this being the Vedic hymn-makers speak as- finding out the evil deeds done during the night, and punishing the wrong-doer. But although for the Greeks, who had forgotten the meaning of the name, they had put on terrible attributes, the Erinyes still retained in their Western home some of their ancient characteristics. Thus for the toil-worn and suffering (Edipus, who unwittingly finds himself in their sacred grove near Athens, they have only a genial welcome. In the Vedic hymns, again, Saranyu draws the long threads of light across the sky. These threads become in the hands of the Erinyes who bear her name, and in those of the kindred Mcerge, or Fates, the threads of human destiny. The idea thus suggested was drawn out more fully in the myths of the Teutonic Norn.s, or Weird Sisters, who are three in number, as representing the past, the present, and the future. In the later versions of the Greek myth, the Erinyes were also said to be three, their names, Alecto, Megsera, and Tisiphone, denoting relentless hatred, jealousy, and revenge. ERIPHYLE, in Greek mythology, the wife of the seer Amphiaraus, whom the Argive chief Adrastus took with him to Thebes, because a prophecy had said that that city could not otherwise be taken. Not wishing to meddle in a quarrel which was not his own, Amphiaraus was com pelled, by a promise which he had previously given to Adrastus, to abide by the decision of Eriphyle ; and Eriphyle had been bribed by Polynices, the son of OZdipus, with the gift of the necklace of Harmonia, to pronounce in favour of the expedition. Thus constrained to go, the seer charged his sons to slay their mother if they should hear of his death, and to march against Tliebes. The enterprise of Adrastus, known as the first Theban war, failed, and the earth opening swallowed Amphiaraus in his chariot. His son Alcmaeon upon this slew his mother, whose Erinysgave him no rest until he surrendered to Phoebus the necklace of Harmonia and found out a spot to dwell in on which the sun had never shone at the time of Eriphyle s death. Such a place of banishment he found on the islands called CEniadse, which had grown up at the mouth of the river Achelous from the deposits biought down by its stream. Here he married Callirhoe, the daughter of the river god, who causes his death at the hands of the sons of Phegeus by insisting on his fetching her the necklace of Eriphyle. ERIS, in Greek mythology, a sister of the war-god Aie. ; . and in the Hesiodic tbeogony a daughter of Nyx, the nighi. who is also the mother of righteous recompense, Nemesis. In the Iliad Eris, or Strife, is described as insignificant at first, but as swelling until her head touches the heavens. In the legend of the Trojan war, Eris is tLe goddess who at the marriage festival of Peleus and The .is flings on the table a golden apple, which is inscribed as a gift for the fairest of the fair. The rivalry of the three deities Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena for the gift is decided by the Judgment of Paris, who, being appointed umpire by Zeus, bestows it on Aphrodite. In the y??mZshe appears under the name of Discordia. ERIVAN, or IRWAX, in Persian REWAX, a town of Russian Armenia, at the head of a province of the same name, is situated 3430 feet above the level of the Black