Witness the world's divine personality. Marcus Aurelius 4.40

The greatest mistakes we make with Nature derive from attempting to control what lies beyond our power. We are all consistently able to engage moments & events larger than our power can control, as individuals or societies, and such engagement will occasionally reveal our mortal limitation in some lethal consequence (usually one we could not precisely predict, tempting us to say it was inevitable). Marcus here reminds himself to be cautious, respectful of Nature's realms, of the natural nemesis that rises to meet human hybris everywhere the latter appears. Today we often hear that anthropomorphising Nature is wrong, that it misconceives important facts. Without contesting this take directly, Marcus and other ancients suggest that our modern anti-anthropomorphism is wrong. We need to imagine Nature in our image, because this brings home to us, in a profound way, the historical and existential truth of our own fragility, mortality, limitation: we are but a small part of her whole. Life is a precious gift, bestowing agency upon a host of creatures whose total expression is not reduced or reducible to any human calculation. As we make and execute plans, we must always leave room for consequences, and other events, outside our control. This will make many of our 'profitable' schemes vanish and wither, 'against all evidence' (which would arrive in some kind of terminal ruin), but will also make such actions as we do engage more likely to offer goods that persist. Refusing to see the wisdom of keeping trees alive until you have cut them all down is not a good idea. Rejecting the worship of the forest for love of lumber does not make you a rational hero (or a builder of civilization: Heracles strikes a balance with Nature; he does not wage total war on her).

Ὡς ἓν ζῷον τὸν κόσμον, μίαν οὐσίαν καὶ ψυχὴν μίαν ἐπέχον, συνεχῶς ἐπινοεῖν, καὶ πῶς εἰς αἴσθησιν μίαν τὴν τούτου πάντα, καὶ πῶς ὁρμῇ μιᾷ πάντα πράσσει, καὶ πῶς πάντα πάντων τῶν γινομένων συναίτια, καὶ οἵα τις ἡ σύννησις καὶ συμμήρυσις. 

Imagine the universe constantly as a single living thing, having one soul and essence. See how all events offer you a glimpse of its integrity. How it achieves every outcome with one motion. How each of its events becomes responsible for the others, as they all occur. How it is woven and wound into a kind of personality we might recognize.