 In a series of propositions leading up to and supporting IIIp6's articulation of the conatus doctrine, Spinoza also treats “essence” and “nature” as synonyms, and assigns them to things independently of the attribute under which they are considered. IIIp4 is worthy of particular attention here. It states: “No thing can be destroyed except through an external cause”. Garrett (2002) persuasively argues that “external” here contrasts, not with “on the inside”, but with “inherent”, where inherence is a technical notion referring to what belongs to a thing in virtue of its essence. This includes both the thing's essence and those properties following from it. These are all “in” the thing. However, a thing may also have accidental properties, which are “in” it in the general sense in which that which is predicated of a thing is in it, and may also be “in” it in the sense in which one region surrounded by another is in it, but which do not inhere in it. Such properties, in the thing in one sense but external to it in another, may be destructive of the thing. In IIIp4d, Spinoza writes “while we attend only to a thing itself, and not to the external causes, we shall not be able to find anything in it which can destroy it” (emphasis added). Reading “in” here in the sense of “inherent”, and “external” in the sense of “not inherent”, this passage suggests that to attend to a thing itself is just to attend to its essence—what is affirmed in its definition—and what follows from it. To attend to what is not inherent in it is to attend to what is external to it, to something else. An actually existing thing, then, such as an existing body, is its essence brought to existence. So long as a thing retains its essence=nature=form, it retains whatever inheres in it, and endures as the same individual.