1, original text
"We now advocate reading with a critical eye, taking its essence and discarding its dross, which ancient scholars did not have the courage to put forward."
Step 2 explain
Essence: the best part of something.
Dregs: Distiller's grains, bean dregs and the like refer to useless things.
Absorb the best things in things and discard the bad and useless things in things.
In fact, the "essence" and "dross" of expansive materials have two different meanings and two different understandings.
One is substance and the other is value.
Materiality means that "essence" and "dross" are regarded as the inherent existence in traditional culture and the inherent nature of various cultural phenomena, and some of them are considered as good and "essence" in themselves.
Other things are bad in themselves and are "dross"; Essence is essence, and dross is dross. As long as they exist, they will never change. Our job is to find them one by one, keep the "essence" and eliminate the "dross".
The meaning of value is to regard "essence" and "dross" as the meaning and function of existing cultural phenomena under realistic conditions, that is, to see whether the things left over from the past are good or bad according to our present survival and development.
The implicit premise here is that we don't think that the meaning of good or bad phenomena is always so fixed, but admit that good or bad is essentially different from person to person and from time to time. Therefore, our job is to look at the past objectively, focusing on selecting and transforming people and society from their realistic development.
These two different meanings and understandings have profound differences in philosophical thinking mode. The understanding of the former is simple and intuitive, so it is very common in people's views, representing a traditional way of thinking, but there are great doubts and misunderstandings. Theoretically, the latter understanding is more realistic, deeper and more reasonable.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Take its essence and discard its dross