but continuous degrees are known, it may be
supposed that love and wisdom increase in man only by continuity. But
it should be known, that in every man from his birth there are three
degrees of height, or discrete degrees, one above or within another;
and that each degree of height, or discrete degree, has also degrees of
breadth, or continuous degrees, according to which it increases by
continuity. For there are degrees of both kinds in things greatest and
least of all things (as was shown above, n. 222-229); for no degree of
one kind is possible without degrees of the other kind.

237. These three degrees of height are called natural, spiritual, and
celestial (as was said above, n. 232). When man is born he comes first
into the natural degree, and this grows in him, by continuity, according
to his knowledges and the understanding acquired by means of knowledges
even to the highest point of understanding, which is called the rational.
Yet not by this means is the second degree opened, which is called the
spiritual. That degree is opened by means of a love of uses in accordance
with the things of the understanding, although by a spiritual love of
uses, which is love towards the neighbor. This degree may grow in like
manner by continuous degrees to its height, and it grows by means of
knowledges of truth and good, that is, by spiritual truths. Yet even by
such truths the third degree which is called the celestial is not opened;
for this degree is opened by means of the celestial love of use, which
is love to the Lord; and love to the Lord is nothing else than committing
to life the precepts of the Word, the sum of which is to flee from evils
because they are hellish and devilish, and to do good because it is
heavenly and Divine. In this manner these three degrees are successively
opened in man.

238. So long as man lives in the world he knows nothing of the opening
of these degrees within him, because he is then in the natural degree,
which is the outmost, and from this he then thinks, wills, speaks, and
acts; and the spiritual degree, which is interior, communicates with the
natural degree, not by continuity but by correspondences, and
communication by correspondences is not sensibly felt. But when man puts
off the natural degree, which he does at death, he comes into that degree
which has been opened within him in the world; he in whom the spiritual
degree has been opened coming into that degree, and he within whom the