The phrase "Every man is responsible for the rise and fall of the world" was first put forward in Gu Yanwu's Record of Japanese Knowledge. "Every man is responsible for the rise and fall of the world" means the rise and fall of the country, and it is the duty of emperors, generals and ministers to protect the country from being overthrown, which has nothing to do with ordinary people.

gu Yanwu (July 15, 1613-February 15, 1682), whose real name was gu Jiang, was called Mr. ting Lin, and was born in kunshan, south zhili (now kunshan city, Jiangsu province). Outstanding thinkers, historians, geographers and phonologists in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, together with Huang Zongxi and Wang Fuzhi, were called "three great Confucianism" in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.

in the sixteenth year of Chongzhen (1643), he was born in imperial academy and joined the Fu Society. After the Qing soldiers entered the customs, they organized anti-Qing activities relying on Hong Guang regime, Wang Yongzuo, the imperial adviser of the capital, Zhu Yujian, the king of the Tang Dynasty, and the poetry society.

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Gu Yanwu is known as the ancestor of "Founding a Confucian Scholar" and "Opening a Mountain for Learning" in Qing Dynasty, and he is a famous scholar of classics, history and geography, and phonology. He has profound knowledge, and has deep attainments in Confucian classics, history, phonology, primary school, epigraphy and archaeology, local chronicles, geography and poetry. He has made achievements in connecting the past with the future and has become an outstanding master who has opened the way for a generation of academics.

He inherited the anti-Neo-Confucianism thoughts of scholars in the Ming Dynasty, and not only made a liquidation of Lu Wang's Neo-Confucianism, but also showed a different interest in learning from Cheng Zhu's Neo-Confucianism in many areas, such as nature and heaven, regulating qi, Tao and implement, knowing and doing, and managing nature and human desires.

Gu Yanwu's distinctive purport of learning to apply what he has learned, his simple and inductive textual research method, his pioneering spirit and his achievements in many academic fields ended the late Ming Dynasty's style of study, opened the way for a generation of simple style of study, and gave extremely beneficial influence to scholars in the Qing Dynasty.