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.

190. All things which have existence in the world, of which threefold