Children of Dune – Entry #5

In the meanwhile, Lady Jessica has been providing Bene Gesserit training to Farad’N, just as she had for her own son.  When Lady Jessica felt the had reached a certain level in the training, she announced to him that the session was “a sort of graduation ceremony” (Children of Dune, p. 305) and that she was charged to say a particular statement to him.

“I stand in the sacred human presence.  As I do now, so should you stand someday.  I pray to your presence that this be so.  The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires.  Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas.  We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create.”

(Children of Dune, p. 305)

I really like what the Bene Gesserits have to say to their graduates.  Maybe I will use this quote one day in a speech to graduates!

On the very next page I found another interesting chapter starter, especially in the current climate of the power and wealth of the top 1%.

What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce.  When did you last hear of a clerk giving his life for the company?  Perhaps your deficiency rests in the false assumption that you can order men to think and cooperate.  This has been a failure of everything from religions to general staffs throughout history.  General staffs have a long record of destroying their own nations.  As to religions, I recommend a rereading of Thomas Aquinas.  As to you of CHOAM, what nonsense you believe!  Men must want to do things out of their own innermost drives.  People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make civilizations work.  Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces.  If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness – they cannot work and their civilization collapses.

-- A letter to CHOAM

Attributed to The Preacher

(Children of Dune, p. 306)

After reading this I looked up information about Thomas Aquinas.  Aquinas was a Dominican priest in the 13^th century who wrote many philosophical papers, many describing and expanding Aristotle’s teachings.  The most interesting point of fact was that Aquinas was a favored student and lifelong friend of Albertus Magnus.  Magnus wrote about the coexistence of science and religion and was an early proponent of the scientific method of inquiry through experimentation and mathematics.  Is this how Brian Herbert selected the name of Erasmus’ human computer subject?