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The Sack of Wisdom (Traditional story from Togo)

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here was a time when there was no more intelligent animal in the world than Yavi the spider. She was wise, prudent and very clever, but that wasn’t enough for her. Yavi was worried because the other animals were becoming increasingly more intelligent. She was especially jealous of humans because she knew that very soon they would be as wise as she was.

So Yavi had an idea: she was going to use her great intelligence to hoard all the wisdom in the world. The clever spider made a magic bottomless sack.

One by one, she went up to all the animals and all the people, and without their knowing she soaked up all their knowledge and all their wit and she stored it in the sack. When she had finished, the sack had become really very heavy and difficult to carry.

Then Yavi had another brilliant idea: she would hide the sack with all the wisdom in the world in the trunk of the highest tree that she knew. The spider held on to the sack with two of her legs and began climbing the tree with her other six legs. But the sack was too heavy and Yavi could barely move. Seeing her suffering, a pigeon gave her some advice: “Spider, why don’t you put the sack on your back? Then it will be much easier to climb the tree.”

Yavi stopped in her tracks: the pigeon was right. And then she began to feel very ashamed. She thought she had all the wisdom in the world but a simple pigeon had shown himself to be more intelligent. With great sadness, the spider dropped the sack. When it hit the ground, the sack broke and all the intelligence flew through the air and was deposited in every corner and on every creature on Earth.

And from that day to this, there is no one who knows nothing and no one who knows everything...