“Nature as origin” contains a cluster of meanings which I find helpful. Immediately, there is the idea of the DNA from which all life originates. But there’s also the idea of my personal life story. We can see this in the contemporary fascination with “origin stories” of familiar super-heroes, where the origin story reveals some insight into the enduring motivations of the character. Nature as origin is also less restrictive than, say, nature as essence. However we may begin, we can always depart from it. But if we talk about a criminal’s nature as if that was his essence, then we are condemning him to always act in a certain way. Another thing is that some environmentalists don’t like using nature to refer to the natural world as if it was something separate from us - like nature is everything that is outside our ego. So nature as origin addresses that, because it suggests that we are of nature, and from it. But we could also say that nature is both origin and future direction. Theodore Zeldin's History of Humanity discusses the metaphor of the tree, and the difference between roots and leaves. Leaves represent the future, where we look to for hope and energy. Roots determine our mood. Inspired by Pierre Hadot's [[The Veil of Isis]]