Pre-Qin Mencius

Shun was born in mu, Fu Shuo was born in the middle of the building, and the glue was in fish and salt. Guan Yi I was a scholar, Sun Shuai was in the sea, and a hundred miles was in the city. Therefore, when the sky falls, people must first suffer their minds, their bones and muscles, starve their bodies, empty their bodies, and mess around. Therefore, patience has benefited them a lot. People are unchangeable, then they can change, be trapped in their hearts, weigh the considerations, and then make them; Color label, sound hair, and then metaphor. If you enter, there will be no legalist school, and if you leave, you will be invincible to foreign patients. The country will perish forever, and then you will know that you were born in sorrow and died in happiness.

Shun came from farming in the fields, from the work of building walls, from selling fish and salt, Guan Yiwu was rescued from prison officials and appointed, Sun Shuai came from a secluded place by the sea, and Prissy was redeemed from the slave market and used. Therefore, if God wants to put the heavy responsibility on a person, he should first make him upset, tired, hungry, poor and unhappy, so as to inspire his mind, make him patient and increase his abilities that he does not have. A person often makes mistakes in order to correct them later, and he is confused and thinking about blocking. Then he can know what he has done. The anger of others is shown on the face, and the resentment is spit in the words, so that you can know him. A country, if there are no ministers who stick to the statutes and sages who can assist the king at home, and there are no countries with comparable strength and enough strength abroad and disasters from abroad, such a country will often go to extinction. Only in this way can we know that anxiety can make people (or countries) survive and develop, and comfort and enjoyment can make people (or countries) go to extinction.

In this short chapter of less than 200 words, Mencius expounded the profound truth of "born in sorrow and died in happiness" around the relationship between objective environment and the fate of individuals and countries.

The article says that if a person wants to achieve great things, he must go through many difficulties and hardships. Only when he has gone through hardships and seen the world can he exercise his will, increase his talents and take on heavy responsibilities. Enjoy yourself at ease. Growing up in a greenhouse, you can't develop the ability to overcome difficulties and get rid of adversity. You will be helpless in the face of difficulties, and you will be depressed and desperate when you encounter setbacks and adversity, which often leads to disaster. So he came to the conclusion: "Born in sorrow, died in happiness".

At the beginning, the article did not put forward any positive views, but listed six ancient sages who rose from poverty, such as Yu Shun, Fu Shuo, Jiao Wei, Guan Zhong, Sun Shuai and Bai Xixi. The common feature of these six people is that they all went through hardships before they took on the "heavy responsibility". It is precisely because of the extraordinary price paid that these sages can "bear the burden of humiliation and have benefited from the impossibility" and achieve great things. So the conclusion behind this in turn explains the success of these six sages. "Be patient, Yico Zeng can't" is a causative sentence. Be tempted, disturb the heart. Forbearance, Mencius' interpretation of justice is to make nature (character, temperament) conform to the requirements of benevolence. Endure, you can also; Ability, responsibility, so forbearance is willfulness. Mencius advocated good nature, and benevolence, courtesy and wisdom were born in the heart, that is, born in sex. Let nature take its course, that is, taking benevolence as its own responsibility. "Ceng Yi can't do it" has increased their ability to do things that they could not have done. Fate setbacks, physical and mental hardships, not only did not make them yield, but sharpened their personality, increased their talent, made them more mature, and eventually became outstanding figures in history. It follows from this that if God wants to put an important mission on a person's shoulders, he must first hone his will and exercise his bones and muscles, so that he can't eat enough, put on clothes and be poor. Only in this way can he adapt to all kinds of hard life and lay a solid foundation for his future achievements.

Then, Mencius further pointed out: "People are unchangeable before they can change; Trapped in the heart, balanced in consideration, and then made; Color to sign, sound to send, and then metaphor. " This is about being born with worry. This is a coordinate compound sentence. The first half of each clause is written as "worry" and the second half is written as "health". In the objective world, it is impossible for people not to make mistakes. If they change, they will get "life" Variability is a realm, which means that people's subjective world has reached relative freedom in the objective world. Being able to change not only means that people meet the requirements of benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and trust in moral quality, but also means that people's understanding and creative ability in the objective world has been improved and brought into play. A "ability" is the embodiment of people's desire, determination and subjective initiative. People's lives are often troubled by the huge contradiction between subjective desire and objective world, and the contradiction between subjective knowledge, conduct, ability and objective situation. Their hearts are full of distress, frustration and confusion, and their thinking is blocked. However, it is in suffering that people have honed their will, raised their awareness, surpassed their own efforts and made a difference. People are emotional animals, and the objective world often causes people's emotions such as emotions, likes and dislikes, fears and so on, and is troubled by these emotions. Show it on your face, show it on your language, and then get sympathy and understanding from others. In this struggle against suffering, we have found the ways and means of life, gained the meaning and value of life, and gained the confidence and freedom of life. This is the meaning of being born in suffering. "Suffering from loss" mainly refers to material troubles, and this layer mainly refers to spiritual troubles.

"If you go in, you can't go home. If you go out, you will be invincible, and the country will die." According to records, death brings happiness. If there is no competent minister, always pay attention to the cultivation of Ming statutes, and no sage who dares to speak out directly reminds the monarch everywhere; There is no enemy who can compete with his country and pose a threat to it, so in this relaxed and peaceful country, the monarch can immerse himself in happiness all day (he needs neither Wen Tao nor military strategy; You don't need an antidote, and you don't need martial arts), and the result of happiness is often national subjugation. This is the meaning of "dying in peace".

Trouble can make people excited-happiness can relax their fighting spirit; Survive in adversity and perish in prosperity. This is the dialectics of life and this is the philosophy of life. This is also a famous conclusion put forward by Mencius as another Confucian master after Confucius, which embodies the Confucian thought of making great efforts and actively using the world.

Because Confucianism is a political theory, the discussion on Xiaomi has always been carried out by saints, saints, princes and ministers, which can also be seen in the article Shun Fa.

Instead, the above-mentioned interactive relationship between objective environment and personal destiny is further extended to the relationship between objective environment and national destiny, and the profound conclusion that "born in sorrow, died in happiness" is drawn, which raises the issue to the level of governing the country by Anbang and makes the meaning of the article deeper and wider.

At first, the success stories of six ancient sages who started from poverty were constantly compared, suggesting the internal relationship between success and hardship. Then, they naturally came to a conclusion in the hardships before the "great responsibility", highlighting the hard-won success. Then extend this truth to governing the country, and finally make the finishing point: "Then knowledge is born of worry and dies of happiness." Show a theme. The author's argument is clear-cut, layer by layer, and finally comes to a conclusion, which is really wonderful. And the whole article is also "the potential scale of Wan Li", which is a dream in both thought and art.

Song Confucian Zhang Zai also said in his famous poem "Mingxi": "With wealth and splendor, my life will be enriched; Poverty is worrying, and the fish is raining. "

Wealth and prosperity can make our life better, which is a common sense that people are familiar with and a desire that people pursue. Poverty and pain are unacceptable. However, Zhang Zai said that poverty and sadness "always bathe in Ye Cheng" is an opportunity to help you succeed. People want smooth sailing and all the best, but Mencius said, "Born in sorrow, died in happiness"; People don't want to be poor, but Zhang Zai says it is "the jade in success" that helps you succeed. Their thoughts are consistent and contain profound philosophy, which embodies the life wisdom of China people. It tells us a truth: life is not a broad road, and there will always be all kinds of difficulties and twists and turns, so we must advance in the struggle of constantly experiencing failures and setbacks and constantly overcoming difficulties. It is this kind of life wisdom that guides people to take difficulties and adversity as the driving force to inspire themselves to forge ahead, consciously temper themselves in difficulties and adversity, strive for victory with perseverance, and cultivate the fearless and self-reliant spirit of the Chinese nation. This spirit runs through the history of China. Sima Qian, who was humiliated in prison, worked hard to write and completed the immortal masterpiece Historical Records. In his letter to his good friend Ren An, Letter to Ren An, he cited many examples of sages who rose in adversity, such as Zhou Wenwang being detained and interpreting the Book of Changes; When Confucius was in trouble, he wrote the Spring and Autumn Period. Qu Yuan was exiled and wrote Li Sao. Zuo Qiuming is blind and writes Mandarin. Sun Tzu was punished for squatting, taking Sun Tzu's art of war, and so on. He said that all this is the achievements of the sages in difficulties. Sima Qian inspired himself by this, inherited this spirit and completed the great cause of writing historical records.

It is of great significance to keep in mind the truth that life is worrying and death is happy, and to advocate the spirit of conscious tempering. Only by consciously experiencing difficulties and hardships can we shoulder the heavy responsibility of welcoming the great rejuvenation of the nation.

Mencius made good use of parallelism (parallelism and duality are also used in a paragraph), and often used a series of neat sentence patterns to expound the same topic from multiple angles and levels, just like the mainstream flowing down for a while, forming a surging, endless and unstoppable momentum. At the beginning of Shun Fa, six successful cases of sages were cited in one breath by induction, forming a group of parallel essays with similar structure and related meanings, which quantitatively emphasized that "born of hardship" is a common social phenomenon and left a deep impression on readers. Then he tried his best to lay out the great task of heaven with parallelism sentences, so that people's previous trials compared the difficulty of the success of saints; Then use parallelism sentences to further illustrate the truth that people born of worry die of happiness. Shunfa uses parallelism almost throughout, semantically, expressing rich content in concise language; From the tone, it strengthens the language momentum and emotional color; From the perspective of language form, it gives people a neat and symmetrical aesthetic feeling.