BOOK II Chapter 1 Of things that exist, some exist by nature, some from other causes. All the things mentioned plainly differ from things which are not constituted by nature. So it is with all other artificial products. None of them has in itself the principle of its own production.
Nature then is what has been stated.
Things have a nature which have a principle of this kind. What nature is, then, and the meaning of the terms 'by nature' and 'according to nature', has been stated. Presumably therefore such persons must be talking about words without any thought to correspond. Some identify the nature or substance of a natural object with that immediate constituent of it which taken by itself is without arrangement, e.g. the wood is the nature of the bed, and the bronze the nature of the statue. As an indication of this Antiphon points out that if you planted a bed and the rotting wood acquired the power of sending up a shoot, it would not be a bed that would come up, but wood which shows that the arrangement in accordance with the rules of the art is merely an accidental attribute, whereas the substance is the other, which, further, persists continuously through the process.