Enlightenment from Gu Zhixue

When a person acts, he won't do what he thinks is shameful.

The so-called "shame" is to restrain your words and deeds with shame and shame. Gu's way of treating people, such as "being a son, a minister, a brother, a friend, going in and out, and taking what he says," belongs to the category of "being ashamed of yourself." In view of the phenomenon that some scholars and literati lost their national integrity because of their dishonesty in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, he combined "being knowledgeable in writing" with "knowing and being ashamed" and emphasized the relationship between them. He said: "A scholar who doesn't talk about shame first has no foundation;" If you don't like the past and listen too much, it's empty learning. Talking about empty learning with rootless people, I think their days are far from being saints. Therefore, he believes that only those who are ashamed and pay attention to practical learning can truly conform to the "sage's way." Otherwise, it is far from the "sage's way". Therefore, "being knowledgeable in literature" and "being ashamed of doing one's own thing" are not only Gu's purpose of studying and his way of life, but also his starting point of advocating practical learning style. In addition, one of the characteristics of Gu's learning purpose is that he not only emphasizes reading, but also advocates going out of his study and walking in the society. He said: "people learn, if they don't advance, they will fall back." Studying alone without friends is poor and difficult. ..... should be learned interrogation. ..... Don't go out, don't study, is a man with walls. Although you are a lamb and a saint in Yuanxian, you will not help the world. " (Collected Works, Volume 4) He advocated the method of combining reading with investigation, which is what we call the method of combining theory with practice today. The introduction and application of this method created a new trend of practical learning in the early Qing Dynasty.

Ancient rhyme research

In ancient times, ancient rhyme was divided into 10 parts, of which 4 parts became the final conclusion, namely, song part, yang part, ploughing part and steaming part. Other departments have also begun to take shape. Later, all the ancient rhymes were refined on the basis of Gu Bu. Gu's greatest contribution to phonology is to study ancient rhyme by isolating "Tang rhyme". Song people also studied ancient rhymes, but regarded every rhyme in Tang Yun as a whole, and did not think of disassembling them. Therefore, although the rhyme is set wide, it is inevitable to produce rhyme. At the other extreme, every word is solved one by one, without paying attention to the systematicness of pronunciation. Gu divided some rhymes into several parts and then merged them with other rhymes. In this way, there are points and combinations, which not only take care of the systematicness of pronunciation, but also take care of the historical development of pronunciation. He abandoned Pingshui rhyme and returned to "Tang rhyme". For example, some words such as "autumn" and "some" are classified as "zhi", which is "dividing Tang rhyme" and returning to ancient rhyme. Such as Zhi, Ma and Geng, the phonology is divided into two, and the house rhyme is divided into three, which makes them belong to different ancient rhymes, which fully reflects the differences between ancient and modern phonetic systems. His work of apartheid is still considered valuable today. Secondly, he was the first to put forward the use of yin voice to enter the sound. In The Book of Songs, there is often rhyme between Rusheng and Yinsheng, and one word has been read twice. From these phenomena, Gu realized that entering tone should be accompanied by yin tone, but the intonation of entering tone and closing tone has no corresponding yin rhyme. About the division of ancient sounds, there are yin-yang dichotomy and yin-yang dichotomy. According to dichotomy, his method is correct. Gu was later praised by scholars as the founder of ancient phonology, on the one hand because of his theoretical achievements, and on the other hand because of his analysis of a large number of materials. His research results are reflected in five phonological works.