The Blind Men and the Elephant

Abstract

This is a curious little book. It has green cardstock folded twice to form the two covers and a spine. The book thus formed is about 3 square. A salmon-colored ribbon winds into each of the covers and corresponding end pages from the opening of the book and out again at the covers' back to loop around the outside of the spine. The illustrations are rather ordinary clip-art views of elephants. The most engaging of them puts one elephant simply on top of another. The first pair of pages introduces us to the six sages, and then each of the next six pairs of pages presents one blind man's finding, i.e., that the elephant is really a wall, a spear, a snake, a tree, a fan, or a rope. After they are all summed up as partly right but in the wrong, the point is applied to theologic wars in which the disputants rail on about something which they have never seen. The only illustration that may live up to the claim of being hand-colored is the cover's salmon, green, red, and white picture of an elephant with a surrounding border. Though there seems to be no mechanism for numbering copies, I doubt that many copies of this little book were produced! I am lucky to have found this copy. The bookseller says that this is an edition of 500 by New York Lilliput Press, though I see no mention of those things within the book.