2348. This shows that human beings after the flood are able to retain all their own life, and to feel it as their own, although neither the life nor the sensation are theirs, but only appear as theirs, differently from those who were before the flood. So the rainbow became a sign, and it was added that there would never cease being winter, summer, spring [Gen. 8:22], which are changes portraying comparable things on the inward level of meaning. 1748, 17 June.