The Blind Men and the Elephant

Long ago, in a town in India, there lived six men who were blind from birth.

They were curious men, who loved to learn and to argue about what they had learned. One day, word went round the town that a king's elephant had arrived and was standing in the square.

None of the six had ever met an elephant. They had heard about elephants all their lives, of course. Some said an elephant was huge and terrible. Some said it was wise and gentle. But none of them knew what one was actually like.

"Let us go and find out for ourselves," said the first. And so they went together, holding on to one another's shoulders, down to the square.

Six discoveries

The elephant's keeper was kind, and let them come close.

The first man stepped forward, stretched out his hands and touched the elephant's broad, flat side.

"Why," he said, "an elephant is just like a wall."

The second reached out and found one of the tusks: smooth, cool and pointed.

"No, no," he said. "An elephant is like a spear."

The third happened to take hold of the trunk, which wriggled and curled in his hands.

"You are both mistaken," he said. "An elephant is very like a snake."

The fourth wrapped his arms around one of the legs.

"Snake? Spear? Nonsense. It is plain to anyone that an elephant is like a tree."

The fifth, who was the tallest, touched one of the great ears as it slowly flapped.

"Even a blind man can tell," he said, "that an elephant is like a fan."

The sixth reached out and caught hold of the swinging tail.

"A rope," he declared. "An elephant is a rope, and nothing more."

The argument

They walked home together, and the argument began at once.

"A wall!"

"A spear!"

"A snake!"

"A tree, I tell you!"

"A fan!"

"A rope!"

Each man had touched the elephant with his own hands. Each was certain he was right, and that the others were foolish, or stubborn, or lying. They argued so loudly and for so long that people came out of their houses to see what the noise was about.

At last, a wise woman who had been listening stopped them.

"You are all right," she said. "And you are all wrong."

The six men fell silent.

"Each of you touched only one part of the elephant," she explained. "The side is like a wall, and the tusk is like a spear. The trunk is like a snake, the leg like a tree, the ear like a fan and the tail like a rope. If you put all your pieces together, you will begin to know what an elephant really is."

The men thought about this for a long time. Then, slowly, they began to talk again. Only this time, instead of shouting, they asked each other questions.

"Tell me about your part," said the man who had touched the tusk. "What did it feel like?"

And so, piece by piece, they built the whole elephant between them.

Why this story has lasted

This parable has been told in India for more than two thousand years. It appears in Buddhist scriptures, in Jain teachings and in Hindu stories, each told a little differently. In the Buddhist version, a king gathers the blind men to show his followers how people quarrel when each sees only one part of the truth. In 1872 the American poet John Godfrey Saxe turned it into a famous poem, and it has been used ever since to talk about science, religion, politics and everyday arguments. This version is a shortened, simplified retelling.