As the masters of Neo-Confucianism in the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhu and Zhu attached great importance to the study of the Four Books and devoted their lives to the study of the Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects of Confucius and Mencius. The study of "Four Books" is an important part of the study system of Zhu Jing. In Zhu's Confucian Classics system, the "Four Books" are more important than the "Six Classics" and their status is higher than the "Six Classics". Zhu made great efforts in the four books and made the most efforts in his life. In the Northern Song Dynasty and the early Southern Song Dynasty, he compiled and edited the Confucian exegesis of the Four Books, and successively wrote The Analects of Confucius, Meng Zilue, The Doctrine of the Mean and On Meng Jingyi. In his forties, he wrote the first drafts of four books. In order to invent the way of sage, Zhu called it "Four Books and Sentences" on the basis of Cheng Zhu's thought, combining the annotations of The Analects of Confucius and Mencius and the chapters and sentences of The Mean, which was the first of the four books. His Four Books or Topics further explained and developed the meaning and material selection. Zhu's Notes on Four Books and Sentences combined exegetics with righteousness, invented orthodoxy with the "Four Books" and expounded righteousness. On the basis of critical inheritance, Zhu re-examined the spirit of Confucianism, re-recognized the humanistic care and moral cultivation of Confucianism, and developed the study of the Four Books to a new height. Notes on Four Books and Sentences is one of Zhu's representative works, and it is also the most authoritative and influential annotation after the four books established their position as Confucian classics. The publication of Annotations to the Chapters and Sentences of Four Books made the Four Books replace the Five Classics as the core classics of Confucianism, which changed the development direction of Confucian classics in China and had a great influence on China's social and cultural thoughts. Source: Lantai World