4166. THAT SPIRITS HAVE MORE EXCELLENT FACULTIES [THAN MEN]. Of what quality the ideas of spirits are, compared with those of men, may appear from the fact, that spirits are [emphatically] in thought. A man can think in a moment what he would be unable to utter or write in the space of hours. In that thought are spirits, not like man's, an obscure, but a distinct thought, in which things are seen as when one sees in a picture everything simultaneously represented to him, for spiritual representations, such as cannot be described, are adjoined. In a word, a single obscure idea is made clear by means of many representative and intelligible ideas that are set forth by spirits. Angelic spirits employ comparatively still more illustrations, for as is a man compared to spirits, so is a spirit compared to angelic spirits, and so are angelic spirits compared to angels. - 1749, March 10.