the rank-and-file is practice; therefore, whatever proves more beneficial for practice is the more deserving. As for the objective of knowledge in the case of the scholars, it combines both aims together—namely, understanding and action.

The case of a man who interprets some element of the Sacred Law, claims that his interpretation is what the Law actually intended, and then openly presents that reading to the public, is like that of someone who comes upon a medicine compounded by a skilful physician to safeguard the health of all—or at least of most—people. One individual arrives whose constitution is unsound—an imbalance that afflicts only a small minority—and the great composite remedy does not agree with him [q 22 a]. He therefore maintains that one of the drugs (1) whose very name the first physician had explicitly listed in that universally beneficial compound was not meant to be the drug that common usage designates by that name; rather, the physician intended some other drug that could only be indicated by that word through a far-fetched metaphor. So he removes the original ingredient from the major compound, replaces it with the drug he imagines the physician intended, and tells the people, “This is what the first physician really meant.”

The people then use that compound in the manner interpreted by this exegete (2), and the temperaments of many of them are thereby corrupted. Others subsequently notice that people’s constitutions have been harmed by that compound, so they attempt to rectify matters by exchanging some of its ingredients for another drug, different from the first; from this a second kind of illness arises among the people, unlike the first (3). A third person then arrives and offers yet another interpretation concerning the ingredients of that compound—different from the first two—whereupon a third kind of illness (4) befalls the people.