heavens nor anything about the order into which he was created.  For if anyone thinks about these, not from discrete degrees or degrees of height but from continuous degrees or degrees of breadth, he is not able to perceive anything about them from causes, but only from effects; and to see from effects only is to see from fallacies, from which come errors, one after another; and these may be so multiplied by inductions that at length enormous falsities are called truths.

188.  I am not aware that anything has been known hitherto about discrete degrees or degrees of height, only continuous degrees or degrees of breadth have been known; yet nothing of the real truth about cause can become known without a knowledge of degrees of both kinds.  These degrees therefore shall be treated of throughout this Part; for it is the object of this little work to uncover causes, that effects may-be seen from them, and thus the darkness may be dispelled in which the man of the church is in respect to God and the Lord, and in respect to Divine things in general which are called spiritual things.  This I may mention, that the angels are in grief for the darkness on the earth; saying that they see light hardly anywhere, and that men eagerly lay hold of fallacies and confirm them, thereby multiplying falsities upon falsities; and to confirm fallacies men search out, by means of reasonings from falsities and from truths falsified, such things as cannot be controverted, owing to the darkness in respect to causes and the ignorance respecting truths.  The angels lament especially over confirmations respecting faith separate from charity and justification thereby; also over men’s ideas about God, angels and spirits, and their ignorance of what love and wisdom are.

189.  Degrees of height are homogeneous, and one is from the other in succession like end, cause, and effect.

As degrees of breadth, that is continuous degrees, are like gradations from light to shade, from heat to cold, from hard to soft, from dense to rare, from thick to thin, and so forth; and as these degrees are known from sensuous and ocular experience, while degrees of height, or discrete degrees, are not, the latter kind shall be treated of especially in this Part; for without a knowledge of these degrees, causes cannot be seen.  It is known indeed that end, cause, and effect follow in order, like prior, subsequent, and final; also that the end begets the cause, and, through the cause, the effect, that the end may have form; also about these many other things are known; and yet to know these things, and not to see them in their applications to existing things is simply to know abstractions, which remain in the memory only so long as the mind is in analytical ideas from metaphysical thought.  From this it is that although end, cause, and effect advance according to discrete degrees, little if anything is known in the world about these degrees.  For a mere knowledge of abstractions is like an airy something which flies away; but when abstractions are applied to such things as are in the world, they become like what is seen with the eyes on earth, and remains in the memory.