That is, "to establish a mind for the heaven and the earth, to establish a destiny for the living and the people, to inherit the unique knowledge for the saints, and to create peace for all generations." This is a famous saying of Zhang Zai, a Confucian scholar in the Northern Song Dynasty. Contemporary philosopher Feng Youlan calls it the "Four Sentences of Hengqu".
The first sentence: Man's understanding of heaven and earth is the culture he creates, which can also be said to be the self-understanding of heaven and earth. This is "establishing a heart" for heaven and earth.
Second sentence: Confucianism combines external and internal unity, combines heaven and man, conforms to nature and strives for self-improvement.
The third sentence: "Continuing the unique learning for the saints" does not mean to continue the Chinese in the general sense. The academic tradition, but the continuation of the Confucian academic tradition.
The fourth sentence: "To create peace for all generations", the supreme ruler should be a person with the virtues of a saint and realize the kingly way. Vernacular:
< p>Relative to classical Chinese, articles written in vernacular are also called colloquial essays. So vernacular, that is, modern Chinese is more written. The formal literary style in ancient times was classical Chinese. In ancient times, before the Eastern Han Dynasty, bamboo slips, silk, etc. were used as document carriers, which inevitably required concise writing. Papermaking was invented in the Eastern Han Dynasty. With the improvement of technology and the invention of movable type printing in the Song Dynasty, these laid the material foundation for the emergence of vernacular style."Vernacular" refers to a type of written Chinese language. It was formed on the basis of spoken language since the Tang and Song Dynasties. At first, it was only used in popular literary works, such as Bianwen in the Tang Dynasty, scripts and novels of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, as well as some academic works and works after the Song and Yuan Dynasties. Official document. The stylistic reform that began in the late Qing Dynasty can be divided into three stages: "new style", "vernacular style" and "popular language". It was not until the May 4th New Culture Movement that it was widely used in the whole society.
In ancient times, the form of classical Chinese was standardized and the words used were relatively uniform. Due to differences in dialects, the vernacular differs greatly from place to place, so communication exhibits regional differences.
Reference materials
Gushiwen website: http://so.gushiwen.org/