Excerpt from "Encouraging Learning" written by Xunzi during the Warring States Period. The original excerpt is as follows:
Everything has a beginning and an end. When honor or disgrace comes, it will be like virtue. Meat rots into adults, and fish withers into moths. Ignoring and forgetting your body is a disaster. Strong cultivation, soft cultivation. Evil is in the body, and resentment is in the structure. Wages are the same, the fire is dry, the ground is the same, and the water is wet. Vegetation is born, birds and animals are numerous, and things are human beings.
Translation:
Everything happens for a reason, and the arrival of honor and disgrace also corresponds to virtue. Rotten meat gives birth to maggots, while dead fish give birth to worms. If you slack off and forget the code of conduct, something will happen. Objects that are too hard are easily broken, and those that are too weak are easily bound. If you are not nice to people, it will cause disgust. Dry wood is flammable, low-lying and easy to wet, and there are many animals and plants. Everything is like sheep.
Extended data
Creative background:
During the Warring States period, slavery further collapsed, the feudal system gradually formed, and epoch-making changes took place in history. Many thinkers expressed their opinions on the social changes at that time from different positions and angles, and gradually formed different factions such as Mohism, Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism, which was called "a hundred schools of thought contend" in history.
A hundred schools of thought contend and wrote many books, publicizing their own views and criticizing others, resulting in a situation of "a hundred schools of thought contend". Xunzi was a representative figure of Confucianism in the late Warring States period. He believes that the existence of nature does not depend on human will, but people can use subjective efforts to understand it, adapt to it and use it. In order to reveal the significance of learning the day after tomorrow, he created the article "Encouraging Learning".
Main idea of the article:
This paper systematically discusses the theory and method of learning, and comprehensively and profoundly discusses the problems related to learning from the aspects of the importance, attitude, content and method of learning.
The full text can be divided into four paragraphs. The first paragraph clarifies the importance of learning, the second paragraph talks about the correct attitude towards learning, the third paragraph talks about the content of learning, and the fourth paragraph talks about learning from beginning to end. The full-text reasoning is profound and the structure is rigorous, which represents the level of the mature stage of pre-Qin essays.
About the author:
Xunzi (about 365438 BC+03 BC-238 BC), Ming Qing, was born in Huaxia (Han nationality) and Zhao at the end of the Warring States Period. A famous thinker, writer and politician, he is called "Xun Qing". It was also called in the Western Han Dynasty because it avoided the taboo of Emperor Gaozu, and because the words "Xun" and "Sun" were homophony.
Xunzi developed Confucianism. On the issue of human nature, he advocated the theory of evil nature, advocated that human nature was evil, denied the innate moral concept, and emphasized the influence of acquired environment and education on people. His theory is often compared with Mencius' theory of good nature by later generations, and Xunzi has also made considerable contributions to sorting out Confucian classics.
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