This sentence comes from Confucius' disciple Ceng Zi's "University". The whole sentence is: "The way of university lies in virtue, in being close to the people and in being perfect."
China is a country with a complete education system in Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. In the Zhou dynasty, there were schools in the palace, the capital and even Luxiang. Mainly public schools, but also private schools. Confucius, for example, was the first person in history to run a private school on a large scale. This is also one of the main means of making a living in his early career.
According to Zhu, at that time, "when you were eight years old, you were under the palace. As for the children in Shu Ren, they all entered the primary school and taught them to sweep the floor, cope, advance and retreat, be polite and happy, shoot at the imperial palace and write some books; Moreover, in more than ten years and five years, from the son of the son of heaven, to the son of the public, the Qing Dynasty, the doctor, the king of Yuan Zhen, and the beauty of all people have all entered the university, and they have all been educated to be poor, upright, self-disciplined and govern the people. This is also the size of school teaching and festivals. "
It can be seen that "the way of university" refers to "the way of poverty, integrity, self-cultivation and governing the country", and its key is "mingde", which is different from the so-called "primary school" and "the habit of vulgar Confucianism memorizing words and chapters" (such as the study of eight-part essay imperial examination).
In ancient times, universities were relative to primary schools. As the name implies, primary school refers to the study of villains and children. In ancient times, he entered primary school at the age of 8, and mainly studied sweeping the floor, coping, advancing and retreating, ritual and music, and shooting books. These constitute the basic learning content of primary schools. University refers to adult learning, adult learning. Ancient/kloc-entered the university at the age of 0/5.
Here, the word "Ming" is interpreted as a verb, meaning "aware of Ming"; The latter word is interpreted as an adjective, which means "light". Therefore, "Mingde" is the virtue of light, while "Mingmingde" is the virtue of knowing and understanding light.
In other words, the essence of the so-called university lies in learning and understanding the light of morality.
The morality of human nature can make people's hearts bright, which is also the foundation of Lu Jiuyuan's theory of mind and Wang Yangming's "conscience".
The moral light to understand and restore human nature is to return to nature. For example, Mencius said that human nature is good, and emphasized that "king" can be obtained from "compassion" and "inhumanity". This is the so-called university way.