Aristotle on Nature

I wrote the following for a class assignment. It deals with Book 2, Chapter 1 of the Physics. Footnotes are omitted. 

Aristotle’s line of thought is that some things exist by nature and by nature he means that which has an internal principle of change. This principle is to be found within the thing itself and not in an accidental attribute. One account of nature says that the matter which constitutes the thing is what the nature should be identified as. Antiphon, a proponent of this view, points out the wood of a bed is the nature of a bed since if you were to plant the wood of the bed what would sprout is not another bed but wood. Since nature tends to produce more of itself, and wooden beds do not produce other wooden beds but only wood, the bed is only an accidental attribute of the wood. Those who wish to identify nature with the form point out that matter considered by itself is only a potential, and doesn’t exist until it receives some form to inform it to be the kind of thing it is. Just as we wouldn’t call some chunk of matter a piece of art until an artist works upon the matter, for it would only be potentially art, so matter cannot be a certain thing until form is compounded with it. So it is the form which contains the internal principle of change and so must be identified with the nature. Aristotle take the latter view since it is more proper to a thing to be that which it tends to and not what it is potentially. In this case, the bed has its nature in the wood since it tends to produce wood and not beds, and that wood has end to which is strives because of the form by nature informing it. The wood is not nature but by nature because of the form.