Select Works, Section 373 (part 2)

As an example: the image upon a mirror may be described as an activity exercised by the reflected object upon the potential recipient: there is no outgoing from the object [or ingoing into the reflecting body]; it is simply that, as long as the object stands there, the image also is visible, in the form of colour shaped to a certain pattern, and when the object is not there, the reflecting surface no longer holds what it held when the conditions were favourable. So it is with the soul considered as the activity of another and prior soul: as long as that prior retains its place, its next, which is its activity, abides. But what of a soul which is not an activity but the derivative of an activity- as we maintained the life-principle domiciled in the body to be- is its presence similar to that of the light caught and held in material things? No; for in those things the colour is due to an actual intermixture of the active element [the light being alloyed with Matter]; whereas the life-principle of the body is something that holds from another soul closely present to it. But when the body perishes- by the fact that nothing without part in soul can continue in being- when the body is perishing, no longer supported by that primal life-giving soul, or by the presence of any secondary phase of it, it is clear that the life-principle can no longer remain; but does this mean that the life perishes? No; not even it; for it, too, is an image of that first out-shining; it is merely no longer where it was.