295. That there is such a difference between the thoughts of angels and those of men was made known to me by this experience. The angels were asked to think spiritually on some subject and afterwards to tell me what they had thought. When they did this and wished to tell me they could not, saying that they cannot utter these things. It was the same with their spiritual language and writing. There was not any word of spiritual language the same as a word of natural language. Neither was there anything of spiritual writing like natural writing, except the letters, each of which contained an entire meaning. But, what is wonderful, they said that they seemed to themselves to think, speak, and write in the spiritual state, just as man does in the natural state, when yet there is no similarity. From this it was plain that the natural and the spiritual differ according to degrees of altitude, and that they communicate with each other only by means of correspondences.