Independence of action

In general, each light beam from two or more sources behaves as if the
other beams were not present, and this independence of action is very
important. The procedure of studying the pencils or rays from different
sources or different parts of a source would otherwise be of little value.
Tracing the rays that show the directions of two jets of water, for example,
does not tell us much about where they go when they hit each other. It is
because the light from each of two sources acts as if it were alone that we
can trace rays to find the regions of light and shadow when both sources
are present.

Principle of reversibility

The principle of reversibility states that light will follow exactly the same
path if its direction of travel is reversed.