There is successive order and simultaneous order. The successive order of these degrees is from highest to lowest, or from top to bottom. The angelic heavens are in this order. There the third heaven is the highest, the second is the middle, and the first is the lowest. Such is their relative situation. In like successive order are the states of love and wisdom with the angels there, also states of heat and light and of the spiritual atmospheres. In like order are all the perfections of forms and forces there. When degrees of height, that is, discrete degrees, are in successive order, then they may be compared to a column divided into three stages through which ascent and descent are made. In its upper storey are things most perfect and most beautiful; in the middle one, things less perfect and beautiful; in the lowest, things still less perfect and beautiful. Simultaneous order, however, which consists of like degrees has another appearance. In it the highest things of successive order which are, as was said above, the most perfect and the most beautiful are in the inmost, the lower things in the middle, and the lowest on the circumference. They are as if in a solid composed of these three degrees, in the middle or centre of which are the finest parts, round about this are parts less fine, and in the extremes which constitute the circumference are the parts composed of these and which are therefore grosser. It is like the column mentioned just above subsiding into a plane, the highest part of which forms the inmost, the middle forms the middle and the lowest the outermost.