The blind men and the elephant

Indian elephant's tusks

It was a very strange village, all its inhabitants were blind.

One day a caravan led by a foreign prince camped just outside the walls of the village who was on a big elephant. The news spread among the villagers and above all the villagers spoke about the prince who rose an elephant, but a question rose over all: "How is it done an elephant?"

The village council met and decided unanimously to send the six wise men of the country to verify how was that animal.

The first blind wise man went to the stranger camp and asked permission to touch the animal. So they approached him to the beast and the wise man touched the elephant's ear.

Returned to the village, he declared without a shadow of a doubt that "the elephant is like a big wrinkled fan ."

The second wise man touched instead the proboscis, and returned to the village, he dissented from the first wise and claimed with certainty that "the elephant is like a big cane with a hole."

It was the time of the third blind wise man, he touched a leg of the elephant, and in disagreement with the other two, he argued that "the elephant is like a pillar or - at the limit - like the trunk of a tree."

The fourth blind man touched the womb of the animal and, sure of his own experience, he said: "The others are wrong, the elephant is like a huge bellows or a breathing wall."

The fifth wise man touched the tusks and claimed with certainty that "the elephant was made as two sharp spears."

Finally it was the turn of the sixth blind wise man who touched the tail of the animal, he returned to the village certain that the elephant was like a "long rope."

Beware of those who think they are the only ones who know the Truth. Truth is so great that no man can know entirely, but can know only a part.