5Likewise, you younger ones, be subject to the elder. Yes, all of you clothe yourselves with humility, to subject yourselves to one another; for “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 6Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time; 7casting all your worries on him, because he cares for you. 8Be sober and self-controlled. Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 9Withstand him steadfast in your faith, knowing that your brothers who are in the world are undergoing the same sufferings. 10But may the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. 11To him be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.
This passage begins with the quiet work of humility, which means making room for other people and letting go of the need to be right or first. It then turns to worry, and suggests that our anxieties are not meant to be carried alone. Staying alert and steady comes next, with the reminder that hardship is shared by people everywhere and does not last forever. It is a practical morning text for anyone who wants to face the day clear-headed and unhurried.
Take care that thou art not made into a Caesar, that thou art not dyed with this dye; for such things happen. Keep thyself then simple, good, pure, serious, free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the gods, kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts. Strive to continue to be such as philosophy wished to make thee. Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life.
George Long, 1862
Marcus Aurelius was Roman emperor from 161 to 180. He wrote these private notes to himself, mostly while on campaign, and never meant them to be published. The text survived through medieval manuscripts, and the work is now known as the Meditations. The Greek title in those manuscripts means 'To Himself.'
The emperor is warning himself about the ordinary pull of power. Having authority can slowly turn a person vain, impatient and hard, as a cloth takes on dye. Most of us face a small version of this. A promotion, a loud opinion or a habit of always being right can change us in ways we don't notice. His remedy is a short list of plain virtues, kept close, and a reminder that life is short enough that there is no time to waste becoming someone worse.
PracticeToday, notice one moment when you feel a little important, such as giving an instruction, winning an argument, or being deferred to. In that moment, do the plainer thing. Speak more kindly than you need to, or do a small task yourself instead of handing it off.
A microbe in pond mud swims along Earth's magnetic field lines. It was seen in Italy in 1963 and then forgotten until 1975.
In 1963, the Italian microbiologist Salvatore Bellini was studying bog sediment under his microscope at the University of Pavia. He saw bacteria that kept swimming toward the same compass direction. He called them magnetosensitive bacteria and wrote up his findings in Italian, in university reports. Almost nobody read them.
In 1975 Richard Blakemore, an American microbiologist, found the same thing again in mud and pond water. He didn't cite Bellini. Blakemore noticed that the cells gathered at the north side of a water drop. Then he put them under an electron microscope. Inside each cell was a chain of tiny iron-rich crystals, which proved to be magnetite, Fe3O4. Each crystal is only tens of nanometres across and sits inside its own membrane sac. Such a sac is called a magnetosome. The cells themselves are spirals a few thousandths of a millimetre long.
The key test was simple. Cells that had been killed still lined up in a weak magnetic field. So the bacterium isn't sensing the field and then choosing a direction. It is a swimming compass needle, and the whole cell is turned by the chain. The cell's flagella supply the motion.
The bacteria were also predicted to differ by hemisphere. Northern ones swim north and southern ones swim south, and this was later confirmed. In both hemispheres, that direction tilts downward into the sediment. The usual explanation is that the field lines guide the cells toward the best oxygen level in the mud. They look for a thin, low-oxygen band, and following a line is easier than searching in three dimensions.
The discovery was soon put to use. Magnetosomes are unusually uniform, and patents were filed for using the bacteria to separate cells and materials with magnets.
RememberSome bacteria build chains of magnetite crystals that turn the whole cell into a compass needle, which points it down into the mud where oxygen is best.
Read nextDennis Bazylinski and Richard Frankel, 'Magnetosome formation in prokaryotes' (Nature Reviews Microbiology, 2004)