looked into and deciphered, are found wanting in arguments, and not serving the purpose which the exoteric meaning would have with regard to the common people. The primary purpose of knowledge for the common people is action, so that which is most useful in action is most suitable for them. But for the learned men, the purpose of knowledge is both knowledge and action. The man who interprets anything of the Law, thinking that his interpretation is the real purpose of it, and then discloses it to the common people, is like a man, who finds a medicine which an expert physician had compounded to preserve the health of all, or of a majority of the people; then there came a man with whom that medicine did not agree on account of the coarseness of his disposition. He presented it to some people, and then thought that by some drug, which the first physician had clearly specified, as composing that universally useful medicine, he did not mean the drug commonly known by that name--but another which he really meant, but used this name for it by a far-fetched metaphor. So he took out the first drug from the compound, and placed another in its stead, which he thought to be the one intended by the first physician. Then he told the people that this was the medicine intended. The people began to use that “improved” medicine, and many of them got injured by it. Then there came another group of men, who, seeing the people sick on account of that medicine, thought of curing them. So they changed some of its drugs with some other than the first one, then presented it to the people for quite another disease than that intended by the first physician. Then there appeared another group which interpreted the medicine in quite another way than the two preceding groups had done. The fourth group gave a new interpretation to the drug and prescribed it for a fourth kind of disease. So as time went on with that great medicine, the interpretations of it took hold of the people instead of the drugs, and they changed and transformed it altogether. As a result the people were attacked by many different kinds of diseases, till the usefulness of the medicine was altogether lost. Such is the condition of those sects which have risen in Islam. For every one of them has made interpretations quite different from the others, and maintained that its interpretation shows the real purpose of the Law, which was at last rent to piece, and lost its primary purpose altogether. The Prophet, knowing that a thing like this would necessarily happen among his people, said, “My people will shortly be divided into seventytwo sects. All of them will be in hell, except one.” By this one he meant the sect which followed the exoteric meanings of the Law, without making any interpretations which may be disclosed to the people. If you were to look into the Law and see the corruption which it has suffered up to this time, through interpretations, the truth of this example would become clear to you.