essent during Jessica's tune to appreciate how completely off guard they were to the possibih ty of an "accidental" Kwisatz Haderach For eight thousand years at least this group of women had been deeply embroiled in ttieir breeding charts and their marriage bartering, all in the name of producing their ' savior' The possibility of such an event actually occurring was tost in die immediacy of then- struggle to attain profane power Also, they had no real experience ID dealing with a "savior" The nearest they had come was Hasinur Fennng, a man they and everyone else took much too lightly Therefore, when Jessica produced a son rather than a daughter, the Sisterhood was more angry than alarmed And when this child was tested by me gom jabbar no one had enough sense to pay attention lo the results They had reallv lost track not only of then purpose but also of their history unable to foresee the possibilities presented when this extraordinary boy was placed within an ancient culture prepared by tradition for the amva! of a super hero The order had ' mislaid" the Fremen and with them the seeded mythos preparing them for a savior The Bene Gessent received a well deserved fate The Eulogy for an Ideal, an anonymous poem included with the Commentaries indicates that when Leto II gained ultimate power and preempted the Sisterhood's breeding program, the order lost its most valuable entree into the power structure The Journals also show his constant antipathy, if not out-nght hatred, of the order Leto managed to change what had been a potent political force into a subservient order of educators and historians Because Leto controlled the spice supply, the Bene Gessent had hide choice but to accede to his wishes, to humor him, and to serve him as efficiently as possible Through this period, though, the Journals indicate that the Sisterhood was never completely subdued There is evidence that the order was involved, periodically, in conspiracies to destroy him Leto dlso took control of the Sisterhood's seeded mythologies, turning them into the basis for his new religion, and that action must have been the ultimate degradation to the order Only after the Scattering and the Starvation did the Bene Gessent regain some of its status Its ancient axiom had held true "Survival is the ability to swim in strange waters" From the records still guarded in the Archives, we learn that the waters following the God Emperor were strange indeed, and that the Bene Gessent went through many overt shape shiftmgs in its attempt to survive The universal consciousness for which the ancient Sisterhood strove apparently was fulfilled in Leto II, but at super-human cost As The Holy Books of the Di\ ided God indicate, the universal consciousness which might have given stability to a tribe of Terran primal humans became, instead, the force that changed the texture and pattern of our complex universe We have learned enough from BENE GESSERIT LIBRARY 128 BENE GESSERIT LIBR