187. From these few observations it can be seen that one who knows nothing of discrete degrees or degrees of height can know nothing as well of a person's state as regards his reformation and regeneration, which are achieved by his receiving love and wisdom from the Lord, and by an opening then of the interior degrees of his mind in succession. Nor can he know anything of the influx that comes through the heavens from the Lord, nor anything of the hierarchical order into which he was created. For if anyone thinks of these, not in accordance with discrete degrees or degrees of height, but in accordance with continuous degrees or degrees of breadth, he cannot in that case see anything relating to them except what is discernible from effects, and nothing of their causes; and to see on the basis of effects alone is to do so on the basis of fallacious appearances, from which spring errors, one after another, which can be so multiplied by inductive reasonings that at last egregious falsities are called truths.