The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole.
naturequotes
For we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles, and have carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements. Plainly therefore in the science of Nature, as in other branches of study, our first task will be to try to determine what relates to its principles.
And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the [completed] nature is the end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best.
Neither by nature, therefore, nor contrary to nature are the virtues present; they are instead present in us who are of such a nature as to receive them, and who are completed through habit.
Nature does nothing in vain.
For the same things are not “knowable relatively to us” and “knowable” without qualification. So in the present inquiry we must follow this method and advance from what is more obscure by nature, but clearer to us, towards what is more clear and more knowable by nature.
I say that habit’s but a long practice, friend, and this becomes men’s nature in the end.
We physicists, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion — which is indeed made plain by induction.
motion / nature / physicists
Now to investigate whether Being is one and motionless is not a contribution to the science of Nature.
This principle of nature being very remote from the conceptions of philosophers, I forbore to describe it in that book, least I should be accounted an extravagant freak and so prejudice my readers against all those things which were the main designe of the book.
book / nature / Philosophers / readers