One Idiom a Day: Chinese Wisdom in Stories

Once upon a time, four blind men lived in a village. None of them had ever seen an elephant, so they were very curious about what one was like.

One day, an elephant came to the village.

The village chief invited the four blind men over and said, “Why don’t you touch the elephant and tell me what you think it is like?”

The first man touched one of the elephant’s tusks.

“I know!” he said. “An elephant is like a giant carrot.”

The second man touched the elephant’s ear.

“No, no,” he said. “You’re wrong. An elephant is like a big fan.”

The third man touched one of the elephant’s legs.

“You’re both wrong,” he said. “An elephant is like a thick pillar.”

The fourth man touched the elephant’s tail.

“Of course not!” he said. “An elephant is like a thin rope.”

The four men began to argue. Each of them was sure that he was right, and no one would listen to the others.

The village chief smiled and said, “Stop arguing. Each of you has touched only one part of the elephant. The tusk may feel like a giant carrot, the ear like a fan, the leg like a pillar, and the tail like a rope. But an elephant is more than any one of those things. If you put all your observations together, you will get much closer to understanding the whole elephant.”

This story gave rise to the Chinese expression “The Blind Men and the Elephant” (盲人摸象 Máng rén mō xiàng).

It teaches us that we should never judge the whole picture based on only one part of it.

Everyone may see things from a different point of view, and each person may hold a piece of the truth. But if we refuse to listen to one another and put those pieces together, we may end up moving further and further away from the truth.