In Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the word "Wen" is like a person standing in front. This man has staggered patterns on his chest. This pattern is very simple. It may be a tattoo or a pattern on his clothes. This is the first meaning of "Wen". Depicting some patterns on the body or clothes can increase the aesthetic feeling. There is a more important reason, which is to give some meaning to the depicted patterns. This is the profound meaning of "Wen". Just like the clothes of athletes in China, they must be printed with the pattern of China flag, not the pattern of Japanese flag. Or you are a man. Under normal circumstances, you should dress like a man, not a woman. There is a saying in the Analects of Confucius: "Be gentle, courteous and frugal, and then be a gentleman." The original intention of this sentence is not to say that this person is very gentle and gentle, but to say that a person's beautiful words and deeds and appearance should be in harmony with his inner spirit, echo each other and look the same, so that he can be called a gentleman.

From this we can understand that literature is an external beauty, but its beauty represents this internal thing and is consistent with the internal thing. Yi Zhuan said: "Huang Shang Yuanji, Wen is also in China." Writing is not only a beautiful decoration on clothes, but also a reflection of inner spirit. Because of this, it can be called auspicious. In later inscriptions, we can see that many glyphs and patterns in the middle of the word "Wen" have become hearts. That's the reason.

Literature is the spiritual expression of beauty, that is, the symbol of morality. Later, it simply refers to virtue. Zheng Xuan noted the Book of Rites: "Good literary talent." The ancients called it "virtue" and "prose", saying that the writing of articles is like colorful splendid weaving, which not only needs beauty, but also has a beautiful ideological realm.

The word "Wen" in later generations can be explained by philosophy. Above the word "Wen" is the prefix "Xuan", which is the color of the sky and also refers to the sky, representing an inscrutable meaning. The following one is half of the word "stubborn", which is the basis of gossip. Bagua is a symbol created by ancient sages who view the world with images, take things near, take things far away, and take meanings with pictographs. This symbol means that although everything can change constantly and the universe is ever-changing, our ancestors realized this in the simplest way. This is one of the reasons why China's most important classic, The Book of Changes, is called the Book of Changes.

Let's look at the word "Hua".

Oracle Bone Inscriptions's word "Hua", one is right and the other is right, which means transformation and change. China people call nature Nature, which means the emergence and change of nature. Who created the universe? In the ancient legend of China, Pangu created the world. After his death, his breath turned into clouds, his voice into thunder, his left eye into the sun, his right eye into the moon, his limbs into the four poles and five mountains of the earth, his blood into rivers, his tendons into paving the way, his muscles into the earth, his beard and hair into stars, his teeth and bones into metal pearls and jade, and his sweat into showers and rain that moisten the growth of all things. After Pangu, Nu Wa appeared. She created human beings from yellow mud in her own image. But people always die. In order not to make mankind extinct, Nu Wa established a marriage relationship for mankind and ordered men and women to find spouses for each other, so that they could have children and reproduce from generation to generation.

But why is the word "Hua" opposite? This kind of coinage is very interesting to study. There is a saying in Zhouyi: "Combining rigidity with softness is astronomical; When civilization stops, so does human nature. Observing astronomy is to observe the changes of time; Look at humanity and turn it into the world. " This sentence appears in the "Ben" hexagram. The meaning of "Ben" is the same as that of "Wen", both of which are "beautiful decorations" and the like.

First of all, we must understand that "combining rigidity with softness is also astronomical; Civilization stops, and human nature is also. " All kinds of complex phenomena in nature can be called "astronomy", and all kinds of words and deeds between human beings should be "sunny", measured and know what to do and what not to do. This is "human nature". This will make the next sentence easier to understand.

"Look at astronomy to observe time-varying; Look at humanity and turn it into the world. " Only by observing various phenomena in nature can we know the changes of seasons and make corresponding adjustments in production and life; Looking closely at all kinds of beautiful fashions and spirits of human beings and using them to educate people all over the world is to influence and influence people with the virtue of employing people and enhance their realm.

This is the original meaning of the word "Hua" in "culture"

Therefore, we can say that the word "culture" reflects the process from the improvement of individual morality to the improvement of human morality as a whole. Here, the meaning of morality is different from what we understand now. Accurately speaking, it should refer to "the high realm of being a man".

It should be noted that the culture I am talking about here is actually a little different from the western culture. The word "culture" in the west comes from the cultivation of crops and has material utility; China's word "culture", from the above analysis, is more inclined to the development of people and people's spirit. This can also be said to be a microcosm of the cultural differences between the East and the West.

Every part of Pangu's body became everything, and Nu Wa created man. However, in the thoughts of the ancients in China, the legend that God created heaven and earth and transformed everything has little influence. The ancients in China tend to think that nature is the self-creation and self-transformation of Qi, and there is no God at work. The role of man in nature is to "praise the cultivation of heaven and earth", help the cultivation of heaven and earth, and make up for the deficiency of the cultivation of heaven and earth.