The Nature of the Things Kind

A natural tendency is one that a thing has just because it is that kind of thing. Poems do not make other poems. Lectures do not make lectures. Maybe a robot can be programmed to make other robots, but the parts of the robot have no real tendency to be together and to keep the robot going. They don't share in robot nature. There is no such nature. And that's why I said that the example of the arrow might be a little bit misleading. As Thomas himself explains, when we give a tendency to a thing, as in the case of the archer giving the arrow a tendency toward the target, the tendency is merely imposed or forced upon the thing.