tuu>e of his Mentat training, he could calculate probabilities involving large quanta of interdependent variables At long range and on a large scale he could quantify fuzzy factors, like ideologies, as well as so-called hard data, like demographic histories, to arrive at the probable consequences of choices affecting a single decision In both heredity and environment then, Paul Atreides was suited to be a Kwisat? Haderach But there was no reason that he had to be If he had stayed on Caladan, for instance he probably would not have encountered the spice drug that triggered full awareness of his latent prescience The Kwisatz Haderach's career began in obscurity He dreamed we are told He withstood the Bene Gessent test of the gom jabbar, proving himself able to exert willful control over reflexes that try to avoid pain He appeared to tultill Missionana Protectiva prophecies for Arrakis He was surrounded by spice and began to feel the tendrils of prescience, but denied that he was the Kwisatz Haderach After tasting the Water of Life transformed bj Jessica, he swirted in the ambiguities of foreknowledge The peak of his career came when he risked annihilation by transforming the Water himself animus and anima merged, he became both giver and taker, he was indeed a Shortener of the Way, the Reconciler of Opposites Then Paul risked combat with Feyd-Rautha at the blind spot, led the jihad, and became addicted to the future Choosing safety for others and isolation for himself he chose to set the Empire on a path of certitude Blind but knowing, he became the cast out Preach er and tried to undermine the religion that Muad Dib's prescience inspired His son Leto II, incipient worm showed Paul the-Preacher that the way the father chose would have led ATREIDES, PAUL 91 ATREIDES, PAUL to race extinction, and that the Typhoon Struggle and Golden Path lay along the preferable route. Paul harangued the crowd at Alia's Temple one last time and fell to a priest-thrust knife. Curtly described like this, the story of the Kwisatz Haderach is merely heroic, one leg-end among many others now revived to be ground up in the mills of scholars. But as a cautionary tale of prescience-addiction it appears to have been crucial to the way our present civilization works. Paul was trapped by his addiction into choosing One Way for his species. Leto II broke the habit, sidestepped the single track toward extinction. Today we enjoy Lcto's legacy of surprise and uncertainty, although until the great hoard on Rakis was uncovered we did not know about either the addiction or how close it had come to cutting off our species. Therefore ii is important thai we try to understand mote than what the Kwisatz Haderach was supposed to do for the Bene Gesserit.