Everyone knows the importance of reading. From ancient to modern times, at home and abroad, there are a vast number of famous sayings and aphorisms to encourage reading, which can be found everywhere.
Franklin said, "Reading makes people full";
Voltaire said, "Reading makes people's eyes bright";
Bacon said, "Reading makes people With fun, giving people brilliance and talent."
Ostrovsky said, "Reading a book is like opening a window to life";
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Emerson said, "If two people have read the same book, there is a bond between them."
Gorky regarded books as "the ladder of human progress";
Herzen regarded reading as "the most important means of acquiring multi-faceted knowledge."
Thoreau regarded reading as "a noble mental exercise."
Dewey compared reading to "an adventure, such as exploring new roads and conquering new soil."
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Montesquieu believed that “If you love reading, you can turn boring moments into moments of joy.”
Mark Twain believed that “Those who have the ability but do not want to read well will There is no difference between people and illiterate people."
Pavlenko believed that "a family that does not read is a mentally disabled family."
In ancient China, the most inspiring quote for reading came from Zhao Heng, Zhenzong of the Song Dynasty. This is: "There is a house of gold in the book, and there is a beauty like jade in the book." It means that as long as you study hard, you will have a good future and a happy life.
In modern times, one of the most famous sayings about reading is "Read for the rise of China" written by Zhou Enlai, the founding prime minister of the People's Republic of China. The close connection between reading and national rejuvenation can be described as far-sighted and lofty aspirations.
The opening chapter quotes these celebrities and great men's views on reading to illustrate the importance of reading, which has long become an ancient saying and classic to advise the world.
If a person lives in this world and wants to live clearly and meaningfully, he needs to read and cannot do without reading. Reading is not only a road to growth and progress, but also a quality of life and the joy of life.
Reading, as a kind of cognitive movement of "building one's own thoughts with the help of other people's thoughts", has always been accompanied by thinking.
The sage Confucius has a famous saying: "Learning without thinking will lead to failure; thinking without learning will lead to peril." The sage advocated a reading method. It means that if you just read without thinking, you will not be able to make reasonable and effective use of book knowledge because you cannot deeply understand the meaning of the book, and you may even fall into confusion. And if you just dream without actually studying and studying, you will end up building a tower on sand and gain nothing.
People are warned here that only by combining learning and thinking can they learn practical and useful knowledge.
Two hundred years after the death of Confucius, his successor to Confucianism, Mencius, the lesser sage, gave the scholars of the world a piece of advice that was similar to that of the sage: "It is better to have no books at all than to believe in all the books." More than 1,400 years later, Lu Jiuyuan, a Southern Song Dynasty philosopher and famous mental education educator, once again repeated Mencius' advice to his students based on his deep understanding of Yasheng's view of reading or his thorough observation of historical facts. : "Ugh, it's better to have no books than to believe in books."
"It's better to have no books than to believe in books"? To put it in a nutshell, when reading, you cannot stick to books, let alone be superstitious about books.
Why? The truth is not profound. All books are written by people, including serious and straightforward history books, and they must have their own opinions. If you believe everything in the book, you will lose yourself. Therefore, reading requires thinking. Otherwise, copying what the book says and following what others say is equivalent to being a second-person speaker. It is harmful and unhelpful both for understanding the objective world and guiding specific practice. Therefore "it is better to have no books".
Due to the concealment, disguise and dynamic nature of human thought, there have been many "two-faced people" in ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad; and those who recorded their existence either due to the limitations of perceptual knowledge or due to rational understanding The shortcomings of the story do not rule out biographies with ulterior motives. As a result, too many false stories have been preserved in articles and books through various channels and means, and even spread to later generations. This requires scholars to be more open-minded and skeptical when reading.
Let’s talk about being a human being first. During the reign of Qin Shihuang, Li Si only read his "Book of Remonstrance and Expulsion of Guests" and saw his analysis of the pros and cons of criticizing the order of expelling guests. It was easy to be moved by the view in the article that "the king does not exclude the common people, so he can understand his virtue". However, considering his evil deeds of being jealous of talents and framing Han Fei in jail and to death, when reading his views again, it feels like eating a fly.
Kang Youwei, the protagonist of the Kangliang Reform, advocated equality between men and women and monogamy. However, he himself had many wives and concubines. He married six wives successively. The sixth wife he married when he was over sixty years old was only 18 years old. The great painter Xu Beihong also painted a work "Kang Youwei's Wives and Concubines in Groups" specially for him. It can be seen that this "Kang Shengren" is a "two-faced person" morally.
Wang Jingwei, the famous traitor, assassinated the regent in order to overthrow the Manchu dynasty in his early years. He was so brave that he would not hesitate to die. The death sentence he wrote in prison was "Sing a song to Yan City generously, and be a prisoner of Chu calmly. Lead the sword into one piece, and live up to the youth." It was even more majestic and spread for a while. Who would have thought that he would later turn to the enemy and become the most powerful traitor in the world. If you don’t know all about him as a person, and just read his final words and talk about “thinking about the past”, you might think that he is a “great hero”!
Besides, Be an official. Pan Yue, a poet of the Western Jin Dynasty, was a shameless villain who followed people, flattered the powerful, and made money. However, he described himself as indifferent to fame and fortune, forgetful of fame, and noble in his emotions in a poem "Xianju Fu". Yuan Haowen therefore satirized him for "having a high sentiment and living idlely for eternity, trying to trust Anren and worship Lu Chen" (Anren, also known as Pan Yue).
Ruan Dacheng was a traitor to Wei Zhongxian in the Ming Dynasty, but the "Collected Poems of Yong Huaitang" he wrote compared himself to a gentleman.
There is also the treacherous prime minister Yan Song, who sells his official position and is full of evil, but in his "Qianshantang Collection" he boasts that "the frost will always protect himself in the evening festival". He is so shameless that he can make people laugh.
There is a folk story in our country that one of the tombs outside Xian County in the Qing Dynasty is said to be from the Han Dynasty. A farmer accidentally broke a plow while plowing his fields. After returning home, he had a fever and started talking nonsense. It was said that a ghost had taken possession of him, and he blamed him for offending the ancients of the Han Dynasty, and asked him to offer sacrifices to make amends.
A scholar named Chen Ruikang came here by chance and asked where and what dynasty the ghost was from. The ghost replied that he was from Xianxian County in the Han Dynasty, so he was buried here.
Chen Xiucai smiled and said: This place was a fiefdom of the Hejian Kingdom in the Han Dynasty, called Lecheng. It was changed to Xianzhou in the Jin Dynasty and to Xianxian County in the Ming Dynasty. Where did the people from Xian County from the Han Dynasty come from?
This fake "wild ghost from the Han Dynasty" was left speechless by the question and had to run away. The farmer immediately recovered from his illness.
The legend is absurd, but this legend makes people think a lot. Take a look at officialdom, shopping malls, and vanity fairs, think about being a human being, being an official, doing things, or even writing books, becoming famous, and starting a family. You can find traces of "ghosts" and feel that there are "ghosts" at work. Therefore, this article "Asking the Wild Ghosts" has certain enlightening significance whether it is aimed at being a human being or being an official.
In today’s officialdom, there are many similar “wild ghosts”. Just looking at the corruption cases and disciplinary violations that have been investigated and dealt with in recent years, there are many stories:
For example, some corrupt elements appear to be riding bicycles, wearing simple clothes, and eating leftovers. , just like a "good official" in his duty, but secretly he enjoys being "hunted" and engages in power-for-money transactions. The director who always rides a bicycle to work on weekdays had as much as 200 million in cash found in his home after the scandal;
Another example is that some corrupt officials talk about their integrity on stage and even face interviews with the media. , also boasted that "my biggest shortcoming is that I am too honest", but in the audience, he used power for personal gain and wholesaled official hats.
There was a "big tiger" who turned his home into an "exchange" for power and money;
Others talked about "Marxism-Leninism" and "materialism", but in fact they "believed in ghosts and gods without discussion" ". There are many people who build ancestral tombs, ask monks to perform rituals, ask Taoist priests to perform rituals to ward off evil spirits, set up Buddhist halls in their homes, and worship at Buddhist niches on time. After the incident, a corrupt official in a certain place actually released a rabbit in front of his father's grave because his zodiac sign was rabbit, which means "life comes after death". The silly energy makes people laugh and wonder where the materialist dialectics has gone.
Mr. Lu Xun had insight into this for more than 90 years and once pointed out clearly: "There is a group of people who are good at telling ghosts and hate science most." This statement still has a strong reality today. Pungent.
No matter how the lies are packaged, they will never change their purpose of deceiving people. Just like there are shadows wherever there is sunlight, as long as our world full of life exists, there will be ghosts attached to it.
Therefore, if kind people want to avoid being deceived by ghosts, they should have some instinctive suspicion in everything. At least they cannot rely solely on their words, but should "know their words and observe their actions", which is a bit of their own. Only by discerning clearly can you avoid being swayed by ghosts and being deceived by ghosts.
Of course, it is best to have the spirit of doubt and the ability to "question wild ghosts" like Chen Xiucai.
This requires a critical eye when reading, and pay attention to extracting the essence and discarding the dross. Otherwise, if you study hard, you will become a nerd, and you will become "a bookcase" as Lu Xun warned.
On the issue of reading, I agree with Bacon’s motto: “Books should be based on science, rather than letting science be based on books.”
I also agree with Hu Shi’s “Four to ": The first is to see with the eyes, the second is to see with the mouth, the third is to see with the heart, and the fourth is to see with the hands. After reading it, through my own thinking, I turned it into my own words and shared them with the world.
I agree more with Emerson's idea, "To be good at reading, a person must be an inventor." This invention is to make new thinking and put forward new viewpoints on the basis of reading. . This is also the essence of the famous saying "standing on the shoulders of giants".
It is in this continuous process of carrying forward the past and opening up the future that human society is galloping forward.