Children of Dune (Dune #3)

by Frank Herbert

“The human mind, as is the case with the mind of any animal, is a resonator. It responds to resonances in the environment.

Faint stirrings of unease began to grow apparent in the anteroom.

She felt that her body had walked into this place with her soul creeping behind.

This is the fallacy of power: ultimately it is effective only in an absolute, a limited universe. But the basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power. Paul Muad’Dib taught this lesson to the Sardaukar on the Plains of Arrakeen. His descendants have yet to learn the lesson for themselves.

“Will you play for your passage?” Jessica asked. “My terms are Fremen terms. If I enjoy your music, I may keep you here to smooth away my cares; if your music offends me, I may send you to toil in the desert for your passage money. If I deem your playing just right for Farad’n, who is said to be an enemy of the Atreides, then I will send you to him with my blessing. Will you play on these terms, Tagir Mohandis?”

“If you put away those who report accurately, you’ll keep only those who know what you want to hear,” Jessica said, her voice sweet. “I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections.”

Mohandis was exactly the kind of man her Duke would have chosen to have by his side in troubled times: one who acted with confidence of his own judgment, but accepted whatever befell, even death, without berating his fate.

You carve wounds upon my flesh and write there in salt!

Everything remains mobile in the desert or perishes.

“When God hath ordained a creature to die in a particular place, He causeth that creature’s wants to direct him to that place,” the old Naib had said.

One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.”

The universe is just there; that’s the only way a Fedaykin can view it and remain the master of his senses. The universe neither threatens nor promises. It holds things beyond our sway: the fall of a meteor, the eruption of a spiceblow, growing old and dying. These are the realities of this universe and they must be faced regardless of how you feel about them. You cannot fend off such realities with words. They will come at you in their own wordless way and then, then you will understand what is meant by “life and death.” Understanding this, you will be filled with joy.

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class—whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

“I’m going back to my books and the other pursuits which hold much more interest for me.”

To rule required accurate and incisive judgments about those who wielded your power.

Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in his universe. He must remain capable of saying: “There’s no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we’ll correct that when we come to it.” The mentat-generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is merely part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: “Now what is this thing doing?”

This moment here is the only observable time and place for us in our universe. I tell you to savor this moment and understand what it teaches. I tell you to learn that a government’s growth and its death are apparent in the growth and death of its citizens.”

“Abandon certainty! That’s life’s deepest command. That’s what life’s all about. We’re a probe into the unknown, into the uncertain.

‘I’m going to rub your faces in things you try to avoid. I don’t find it strange that all you want to believe is only that which comforts you. How else do humans invent the traps which betray us into mediocrity? How else do we define cowardice?’

The one-eyed view of our universe says you must not look far afield for problems. Such problems may never arrive. Instead, tend to the wolf within your fences. The packs ranging outside may not even exist.

“History holds its own court and delivers its own judgments,” he said. “I doubt that I’ll be concerned when my judgment’s handed down.”

In the desert, especially at night, you encounter the dangers of hard thinking.”

He used the Fremen words of warning: “Don’t throw your blood upon my knife.”

You witches move too deeply and darkly for mere mortals ever to trust.”

Something flickered at the edges of conscious perception, warning him.

Fremen superstition said that whoever saw the Biyan, the White Lands, was granted a two-edged wish, a wish which might destroy you.

Knowing was a barrier which prevented learning.

By design or accident, this place conveyed a sense of abandoned desolation.

“Nothing has happened; nothing to forgive,”

Fremen served best when free of guilt or resentment.

“You speak as one who recites, not one who believes,” Namri said.

That which you know in one world, you shall not find in another.”

The thought was like stagnant water. It would not quench his thirst.

‘In doing good, avoid notoriety; in doing evil, avoid self-awareness.’”

“Since you ask me to do it, I will not. If you were indifferent, though . . .”

She glanced from one to the other, then: “Why’re you so quiet suddenly?” “I’ve just had a thought which requires considerable reflection,” Alia said. “Reflect at your leisure, dear aunt,” Ghanima sneered.

“You are a child seeking to be a man. When you are a man, you will seek in vain for the child you were.”

I’m a coward, he thought. But a coward, even a coward, might die bravely with nothing but a gesture.

“It is said that there is nothing firm, nothing balanced, nothing durable in all the universe—that nothing remains in its state, that each day, some time each hour, brings change.”

There’s no mystery about a human life. It’s not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”

We humans are a form of colony organism! he thought.

“You’ve learned a most important lesson,” Jessica said. “Do you know what that lesson is?” He dropped his hands to his sides, stared at her. Then: “My mind controls my reality.”

“You will become whatever it is you most deeply desire.”

“Now help me back to the sietch, for I’ve been in far places and am weak with the weariness of my travels.

“Religion is the emulation of the adult by the child. Religion is the encystment of past beliefs: mythology, which is guesswork, the hidden assumptions of trust in the universe, those pronouncements which men have made in search of personal power, all of it mingled with shreds of enlightenment. And always the ultimate unspoken commandment is ‘Thou shalt not question!’ But we question. We break that commandment as a matter of course. The work to which we have set ourselves is the liberating of the imagination, the harnessing of imagination to humankind’s deepest sense of creativity.”

The amber fragrance of her bosom strikes through to my innermost senses. She torments me and oppresses me by her very existence.

“She has taken leave of her senses,” Alia said.

“And I’ve missed you,” he said, allowing all of his grief to flow into his voice. She stared at him, startled by the sadness.

Someone else stared back at him from her eyes.

“Life is a mask through which the universe expresses itself. We assume that all of humankind and its supportive life forms represent a natural community and that the fate of all life is at stake in the fate of the individual. Thus, when it comes to that ultimate self-examination, the amor fati, we stop playing god and revert to teaching. In the crunch, we select individuals and we set them as free as we’re able.”