but substances at rest, and in
the natural world, fixed like those in the lands that are called matters.
As such is the origin of substances and matters, it follows, first, that
these substances and matters also are of three degrees; secondly, that
they are held together in mutual connection by encompassing atmospheres;
thirdly, that they are fitted for the production of all uses in their
forms.

303. That such substances or matters as are in earths, were brought forth
by the sun through its atmospheres any one will readily acknowledge who
reflects that there are continual mediations from the First to outmosts,
and that nothing can take form except from what is prior to itself, and
so finally from the First. The First is the sun of the spiritual world,
and the First of that sun is God-Man, or the Lord. Now as atmospheres are
those prior things, whereby the spiritual sun manifests itself in outmosts,
and as these prior things continually decrease in activity and expansion
down to the outmosts, it follows that when their activity and expansion
come to an end in outmosts they become substances, and matters such as are
in lands, which retain within them, from the atmospheres out of which they
originated, an effort and conatus to bring forth uses. Those who do not
evolve the creation of the universe and all things thereof by continuous
mediations from the First [Being], can but hold hypotheses, disjoined and
divorced from their causes, which, when surveyed by a mind with an interior
perception of things, do not appear like a house, but like heaps of
rubbish.

304. From this universal origin of all things in the created universe,
every particular thereof has a similar order; in that these also go forth
from their first to outmosts which are relatively in a state of rest, that
they may terminate and become permanent. Thus in the human body fibers
proceed from their first forms until at last they become tendons; also
fibers with vessels proceed from their first forms until they become
cartilages and bones; upon these they may rest and become permanent.
Because of such a progression of fibers and vessels in man from firsts
to outmosts, there is a similar progression of their states, which are
sensations, thoughts, and affections. These, also, from their firsts,
where they are in light, proceed through to outmosts, where they are in
shade; or from their firsts, where they are in heat, to outmosts where
they are not in heat. With