A knowledge of degrees is like a key to lay open the causes of things, and to give entrance into them.  Without this knowledge, scarcely anything of cause can be known; for without it, the objects and subjects of both worlds seem to have but a single meaning, as if there were nothing in them beyond that which meets the eye; when yet compared to the things which lie hidden within, what is thus seen is as one to thousands, yea, to tens of thousands.  The interiors which are not open to view can in no way be discovered except through a knowledge of degrees.  For things exterior advance to things interior and through these to things inmost, by means of degrees; not by continuous degrees but by discrete degrees.  “Continuous degrees” is a term applied to the gradual lessenings or decreasings from grosser to finer, or from denser to rarer; or rather, to growths and increasings from finer to grosser, or from rarer to denser; precisely like the gradations of light to shade, or of heat to cold.  But discrete degrees are entirely different:  they are like things prior, subsequent and final; or like end, cause, and effect.  These degrees are called discrete, because the prior is by itself; the subsequent by itself; and the final by itself; and yet taken together they make one.  There are atmospheres, from highest to lowest, that is, from the sun to the earth, called ethers and airs that are separated into such degrees; they are like simples, collections of simples, and again collections of these, which taken together are called a composite.  Such degrees are discrete [or separate], because each has a distinct existence, and these degrees are what are meant by “degrees of height;” but the former degrees are continuous, because they increase continuously and these degrees are what are meant by “degrees of breadth.”

185.  Each and all things that have existence in the spiritual world and in the natural world, have conjoint existence from discrete degrees and from continuous degrees together, that is, from degrees of height and from degrees of breadth.  The dimension which consists of discrete degrees is called height, and the dimension that consists of continuous degrees is called breadth; their position relatively to the sight of the eye does not alter the designation.  Without a knowledge of these degrees nothing can be known of how the three heavens differ from each other; nor can anything be known of the differences of love and wisdom of the angels there; nor of the differences of heat and light in which they are; nor of the differences of atmospheres which environ and contain these.  Nor without a knowledge of these degrees can anything be known of the differences among the interior powers of the minds of men, thus nothing of their state as regards reformation and regeneration; nor anything of the differences among the exterior powers of the bodies both of angels and men; and nothing whatever can be known of the distinction between spiritual