 One of the striking features of this complex—and certainly, in this form, original—account is that being and non-being are treated as correlative categories: something may be said to be under one mode and not to be under another. Attribution of being is subject to the dialectic of affirmation and negation. Eriugena returns in Book Three to give a very complex discussion of the meaning of “ex nihilo” in the concept of creatio ex nihilo, which makes use of some of these modes of being and non-being, and, in general, these modes should be borne in mind when interpreting Eriugena’s more overt metaphysical statements. Thus when Eriugena calls God “nothing”, he means that God transcends all created being, God is nihil per excellentiam (“nothingness on account of excellence”) or, as he puts it, nihil per infinitatem (“nothingness on account of infinity”). Matter, on the other hand, is also called “nothing” but it is “nothing through privation” (nihil per privationem). Similarly, created things are called “nothing” because they do not contain in themselves their principles of subsistence (Eriugena is here repeating St. Augustine’s view that the creature, considered apart from God, is mere nothing).