The object of philosophic inquiry, then, in that second department of it, which we considered with respect to the phenomena of nature as successive, we have found not to be any thing different from the phenomena themselves, but to be those very phenomena, as preceding or following, in certain regular series. Power is not any thing that can exist separately from a substance, but is merely the substance itself, considered in relation to another substance,--in the same manner, as what we denominate _form_, is not any thing separate from the elementary atoms of a mass, but is merely the relation of a number of atoms, as co-existing in apparent contact. The sculptor at every stroke of his chisel, alters the form of the block of marble on which he works, not by communicating to it any new qualities, but merely by separating from it a number of the corpuscles, which were formerly included by us, in our conception of the continuous whole; and when he has given the last delicate touches that finish the Jupiter, or the Venus, or Apollo, the divine form which we admire, as if it had assumed a new existence beneath the artist's hand, is still in itself _unaltered_,--the same quiescent mass, that slumbered for ages in the quarry of which it was a part. Quale fuscæ marmor in Africæ Solo recisum, sumere idoneum Quoscunque vultus, seu Diana Seu Cytheræa magis placebit; Informis, ater, sub pedibus jacet, Donec politus Phidiaca manu Formosa tandem destinatæ Induitur lapis ora divæ. Jam, jamque poni duritiem placens, Et nunc ocelli, et gratia mollium Spirat genarum, nunc labella et Per nivium coma sparsa collum.