But all will finally return to God, and Erigena thought he found analogies of this return everywhere in nature. =The Greek Principle which Erigena formulated for the Middle Ages.= These details of the teaching of Erigena are unimportant except as they throw light upon that Greek underlying principle which he formulated for the Middle Ages. _The Real is the Universal. The more universal a thing is, the more real and therefore the more perfect it is._ If we have an idea of a universal, that universal has existence because it is universal. The idea of God is universal, therefore God exists. The idea of the world is a universal, but not so universal as the idea of God, and therefore not so surely existent. But the idea of the world has more reality than the idea of a tree. Mediæval philosophy becomes from this time on _a logical theism_. In the case of Erigena it is a logical pantheism. The world is a logical mosaic. Real dependence is logical dependence, and what we in modern times call the causes and effects between natural objects are regarded by the Middle Ages as sufficiently explained if put in logical arrangement. This is the core of mediæval thinking, and the student will fail to understand the civilization of the Middle Ages unless he grasps this central principle. But this realizing of the logical universal is Greek and betrays the fundamentally Greek character of mediæval civilization. The objective spiritual church has merely taken the place of objective nature. Mediæval history is a conflict between Greek universalism and the Christian conception of the individual. In Erigena the Greek element appeared in overwhelming dominance. Erigena is a smaller Augustine――Augustine uncontrolled by great masses of thought and uninspired by practical ideals of building up the church. Erigena is a “belated Gnostic.” Why was it that his neo-Platonic pantheism did not overcome entirely the individualistic element in Christian dogma? Why, on the contrary, did it bring out far-reaching issues of conflict when a century later the significance of his teaching was understood? Because inherently and fundamentally in the nature of the German peoples, as appearing in their customs and laws, was the conviction of the rights of the individual personality. In the teaching of the Christian fathers the element of the spiritual personality found a deep echo in the German nature. The German could tolerate and did actually live under the later church doctrine of a moderate realism; but the measured calm of the Greek pantheistic conception of Erigena deprived the German of all his inherited ideals. Thus when intellectual activity was aroused a century later, the conflict became hot over the issue in Erigena’s doctrine. Erigena was the forerunner of the scholastics. It was he who tossed the apple of discord among the thinkers of the Middle Ages.