because they perceive that love, know from the speech the whole state of another. [4] This it has been granted me to know from much experience.  I have heard angels disclosing the character of another’s life merely from hearing him speak.  They also said that from any ideas of another’s thought they could know all things of his life, because from those ideas they know his ruling love, in which are all things in their order.  They know also that man’s book of life is nothing else.

237.  Angelic language has nothing in common with human languages except certain words that are the sounds of a specific affection; yet this is true not of the words themselves but of their sounds; on which subject something will be said in what follows That angelic language has nothing in common with human languages is evident from the fact that angels are unable to utter a single word of human language.  This was tried but they could not do it, because they can utter nothing except what is in entire agreement with their affections; whatever is not in agreement is repugnant to their very life, for life belongs to affection, and their speech is from their life.  I have been told that the first language of men on our earth coincided with angelic language because they had it from heaven; and that the Hebrew language coincides with it in some respects.

238.  As the speech of angels corresponds to their affection, and their affection belongs to their love, and as the love of heaven is love to the Lord and love towards the neighbor (see above, n. 13-19), it is evident how choice and delightful their talk must be, affecting not the ears only but also the interiors of the mind of those who listen to it.  There was a certain hard-hearted spirit with whom an angel spoke.  At length he was so affected by what was said that he shed tears, saying that he had never wept before, but he could not refrain, for it was love speaking.

239.  The speech of angels is likewise full of wisdom because it proceeds from their interior thoughts, and their interior thought is wisdom, as their interior affection is love, and in their speech their love and wisdom unite.  For this reason their speech is so full of wisdom that they can express in a single word what man cannot express in a thousand words also the ideas of their thought include things that are beyond man’s comprehension, and still more his power of expression.  This is why the things that have been heard and seen in heaven are said to be ineffable, and such as ear hath never heard nor eye seen. [2] That this is true I have also been permitted to learn by experience.  At times I have entered into the state in which angels are, and in that state have talked with them, and I then understood everything.  But when I was brought back into my former state, and thus into the natural thought proper to man, and wished to recall what I had heard I could not; for there were thousands of things unadapted to the ideas