and waiving the essential elements of prayer because of illness—this is another subject, falling under the breadth of the religion and the removal of hardship, concerning which revealed laws may differ. This is unlike the first subject: its general principle cannot differ between revealed laws, even though its particular applications may differ. Indeed, it is established by reason, as the saying goes:

“The wise person is not merely one who distinguishes good from evil, but one who recognizes the better of two goods and the worse of two evils.”

And the following verse is recited:

“When two different ailments appear in his body,
The discerning man treats the more dangerous.”

This principle holds in all other matters. A physician, for example, needs to strengthen the patient’s vitality and repel disease. Corruption is a means that increases both. When vitality is abundant, it is preferable to forgo it in order to weaken the disease; when vitality is low, it is preferable to employ it, because preserving both vitality and disease is better than eliminating both: the loss of vitality necessarily leads to death.

Thus, people recognize that rainfall during a drought is a mercy for them, even though some people gain strength from the vegetation it produces and use that strength to commit injustice. The absence of rain, however, would cause them greater harm. Likewise, they prefer the existence of a ruler, despite his injustice, to having no ruler, as one wise person said: “Sixty years under an unjust ruler are better than a single night without a ruler.”

Nevertheless, the ruler is held accountable for the aggression he commits and for his neglect of