1.     It is in the nature of the rational mind to distinguish things and phenomena into differing groups, series, orders, degrees, genera, species, and categories.

Note the differences between: heavy - light; solids - liquids - gases; stone - plant - animal; cat - kitten; beast - man; sense - imagination - reason; cold - warm - hot; sound - light - gravity; notes of the musical scale; slow - fast.

a)     There is nothing, great or little, which is not composed of both discrete and continuous degrees - degrees of "height" and degrees of "breadth". This is the origin of all varieties, spiritual as well as natural. ⁽¹³³⁾
b)     Continuous degrees are stages on continuous lessenings or decreases from the grosser to the finer or from the denser to the rarer, and vice versa. Illustrated by light passing into shade, or heat passing into cold.
c)     Discrete degrees are successive compositions, likened to conglobations from simples. Such degrees can be predicated only of the mutual relation of successives of the same series, which have a common origin. (Thus they must be in a homogeneous series)p. 48
d)     Discrete degrees have no finite ratio and communicate only by "influx". The influx of the superior degree into the lower takes place according to "correspondence".
            Correspondence may be defined as the appearing of what is internal in what is external, and its representation there. ⁽¹³⁴⁾
e)    The progression of discrete degrees is like that of ends into causes and causes into effects.
                Compare: will - thought; thought- deed; love - wisdom - use; understanding- sight; thought- speech; etc.
                Illustrations: In dead nature, conatus - force- motion, DLW 218; in man, living conatus (will united to thought) - living force (interiors of body) - living motion (actions of body). ⁽¹³⁵⁾
f)    Discrete degrees are in triplicate order.⁽¹³⁶⁾
g) The ultimate (last) degree is the complex, containant, and basis of the prior degrees, and these subsist-in the ultimate degree in "simultaneous order". ⁽¹³⁷⁾
    In successive order the first degree makes the highest, the second the middle, the third the lowest. In simultaneous order the first degree makes the inmost, the third degree the outmost.⁽¹³⁸⁾

4.     There are three degrees in the spiritual world and within everything in it.⁽¹⁴⁰⁾ (See Chart of Degrees, A and B)

5.     There are three degrees in the natural world and in every thing in it. (See Chart of Degrees, A and B.)

Note:
    The discrete degrees in the natural world are caused by the corresponding degrees of the spiritual world and by correspondent spiritual activities, and clothe the discrete spiritual degrees with correspondent things in the realm of space, time, matter and motion.

    Spiritual substances, which are immaterial, yet substantial, are forms of conatus, and have activities which are not measurable in terms of space and time (speed, motion), but in terms of degrees of quality or of state, such as good, truth, love, wisdom, etc.

    Natural substances, which are "material", originate with motion in space and time.  Their activities are measured in terms of motion in space; whence come all natural attributes and properties, such as mass, size, speed, weight, shape, color, temperature, energy-constants, and other sensible effects.

9.     Organic forms (produced by the creative influx of the Divine life) are composed out of the elemental substances of each world.

    Spiritual forms (like man's soul and spiritual mind, and the lands, plants. and animals seen in the other life) are formed solely out of the substances of the spiritual world.⁽¹⁴³⁾
    Natural organic forms (such as man's body and natural mind, and the plants and animals of our world) are formed out of the substances of the spiritual world with an additional clothing of natural substances.⁽¹⁴⁴⁾
    In everything created in this world there is a spiritual and a natural, since effects cannot exist without their causes, nor a body without a soul ⁽¹⁴⁵⁾, and since the natural originates from the spiritual like the material from the substantial.⁽¹⁴⁶⁾

    This formation is effected through the successive entities of elemental creation.

    In every case, the active spiritual which in every degree clothes itself with a body, is an affection.⁽¹⁴⁹⁾

    The senses of man are formed in correspondence with the atmospheres,⁽¹⁵¹⁾ and vice versa^(151a)
    Thus organisms rest in and upon the degrees of the elemental series of substances of both worlds.

The Word as a Man SD 5131 H'....The Word, in its whole complex, is as one Man as to all and every one of its constituents, within and without; and ... that Man is like the Lord's Human was, in the world; wherefore the Lord is called the Word (John 1).

The Divine truth in its form is a Man. SD 4775, 5556 There is a conatus and striving towards the human form because God is Man. DLW 400:2.

Everything Divine which proceeds from Jehovah God, from its firsts in heaven to its lasts in the world, tends to the human form. D Lord 32e. Cf. AC 5110:3, 6605.

132 DLW 174 et seq., 184 et seq.

133DLW 184; ISB 16; HH 38.

134 AC 5423. Read Div.Wis. ii.(3), which also contains references on the subject

135 See LJ post, 307.

136 DLW 203.

137 DLW 209ff.

138 DLW 205ff.

139 DLW 223, 230235

140 TCR 75, 76, of Coro. 17.

141 DLW 257; DP 279:7, 181.

142 Cf 2 Econ. 232-235, Action xxiii.

143 TCR 103, 470: DLW 260, 270; Div.Wis. viii.3; AE 1211 1218.

144 DLW 344.

145 AE 1196 :2 1197 :2.

146 Canons, God, iv.10; TCR 280 :8; AC 5084 :3, 4524 5711.

147 AE 1209-1212.

148 Ath.. Cr. 26..

149 Confer Ath. Cr. 178.

150 DLW 176.

151  AC 4523,39, 2 Of AC 3628:2: SD 4063, 4066: LJ post. 312.

151a SD 466.