Chapter 5 Five virtues are always

The Yin-Yangists believe that the five elements can be perfectly applied to everything and even everything. As long as anything can be divided into five categories, it can naturally fit into the five elements.So not only tangible things and natural things have five elements, but even ideology and morality can be divided into five elements. For example, Sun Wu wrote "Sun Tzu's Art of War" and proposed that "generals are wise, trustworthy, benevolent, courageous, and strict." The Yin-Yang family immediately pointed out that yes, this is the five virtues evolved from the five elements!In fact, not only will there be five virtues, but even chickens have five virtues. It is said in "Han Shi Wai Zhuan" that a chicken "wears a hat on its head is Wen, its claws can fight is Wu, and the enemy dares to charge and kill before it is brave. Greeting each other is benevolence, and crowing on time is faith." To sum up, the five virtues of chickens are literature, martial arts, courage, benevolence, and faith.

So there are a lot of good words about moral character, and you can pick out five of them to be the five virtues that match the five elements, such as "warmth, kindness, respect, frugality, and concession", such as "loyalty, benevolence, sincerity, integrity, Courage", various arguments are inconsistent.However, the five elements have birth and restraint. Are there birth restraints for the five virtues?Even if you can insist on loyalty and benevolence, you can't come up with honesty and bravery, can you?But the old professor Zou Yan stood up and made a clear statement: Yes, the five virtues also have birth and restraint. Although it is not obvious, its cycle can be seen.

Professor Zou Lao believes that the five elements are the basic attributes of all things created by heaven, and the five virtues are the basic virtues bestowed by heaven on earth. Any dynasty must also emphasize a certain kind of virtue.Therefore, just as the five elements have birth and restraint and will cycle, the five virtues will also be emphasized in different eras. More specifically, the virtues of dynasties will change with the dynasties.Furthermore, he boldly concluded and predicted that the change of dynasties is also the result of the change of virtue, which is called "the five elements are victorious".

Professor Zou did not clearly point out which five virtues are the so-called five virtues, probably because he could not solve the problem of the relationship between loyalty and benevolence. Germany and Tude.He said: "Since the creation of heaven and earth, the five virtues have shifted, and each has its own corresponding dynasty... After the earth virtue, the wood virtue inherited, and then the gold virtue, the fire virtue, and the water virtue..." The cycle goes on like this Therefore, it is also called "five luck". So, what exactly determines the virtue of each dynasty?This is related to another set of traditional Chinese mystical theories, that is, since celestial phenomena and human affairs are related and echoed, then the heavens will give advance notice of major events on the ground.These forecasts are positive and negative. For example, comets flying in the sky, thick clouds, and disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and mudslides are negative. Let the minister write a review.As for positive forecasts, they can be divided into three categories: one is auspicious, the other is mascot, and the third is prophecy.

The so-called auspiciousness refers to all kinds of illusory scenes that appear out of thin air and seem to have good things happening, for example, there are some dragons, phoenixes, and unicorns coming to the world, for example, some unusual colorful clouds appear, and so on.The so-called mascot is a real auspicious object that everyone can see and touch.In fact, strictly speaking, auspicious objects also belong to the category of auspiciousness, but what we call auspiciousness in the narrow sense is purely pragmatic. For example, since ancient times, people everywhere claim to have seen dragons and phoenixes, but no one has caught one and made it public. It can't be more false.What about mascots?For example, where did a rice plant grow three ears, where a large jade stone was dug out of a mountain... and so on, no matter whether it is true or not, or whether it is forged, at least one person can see it, and it can be seen. Go and touch it, won't you?

The third is prophecy. The word "prophecy" is pronounced "while" and refers to a prophecy that may come true.The prophecy we are talking about here mainly includes prophecy and prophecy. The so-called prophecy refers to the mysterious documents related to prophecy. Auspiciousness corresponds to unlucky things, and mascots correspond to unlucky things.As we said before, a comet flying in the sky is unlucky, and a dragon flying over it is auspicious; a piece of jade dug out of the ground is an auspicious object, and a stone is dug out, and the words "ancestral dragon dies and dies" are written on the stone. Similar words are unlucky things.As for prophecy, the word itself has no positive or negative color. It may herald good things or bad things, and it may herald good things for some people and bad things for others.

For example, the earliest prophecy rumor recorded in ancient history is "Mountain mulberry bow, wooden bag, the scourge of the destruction of the Zhou Kingdom", which is said to indicate that the beauty Baosi will disrupt the Zhou Dynasty and lead to the demise of the Western Zhou Dynasty - the legend of "the disaster of the country's subjugation" When Bao Si was young, she was adopted by a couple who sold mulberry bows and Ji wooden bags.This is basically a prophecy that predicts bad things, but for those who hate the Zhou Dynasty, it may be a good thing.For another example, when Chen Sheng and Wu Guang rebelled, they made up the prophecy "Great Chu Xing, King Chen Sheng", which is of course a good thing for the two brothers and the survivors of Chu State, but it must be a big bad thing for the Qin Dynasty. .

Closer to home, Professor Zou believes that the virtues of the so-called dynasty must be determined by these auspicious signs, auspicious objects and prophecies. For example, the earliest Yellow Emperor met Huanglong, and there was a large earthworm more than ten feet long and several meters thick. Yellow belongs to soil, and earthworms also belong to soil, so the Yellow Emperor is Tu Desheng.When it came to Yushun, it was also called the Yu Dynasty, and the Yu Dynasty was Tude.The Yu Dynasty was followed by the Xia Dynasty. The founding monarch of the Xia Dynasty, Dayu, once encountered a green dragon in the suburbs. The land where the grass and trees were lush, the green was the color of wood, and the wood restrained the soil, so the Xia Dynasty was the virtue of wood.The Shang Dynasty replaced the Xia Dynasty, catching up with the good thing of silver emerging from the mountains, so Shang belonged to gold, and gold restrained wood, so Shang was Jinde.In the Zhou Dynasty, Emperor Zhou once saw a big fire meteor hovering over the palace for a week, turning into countless fire crows and flying away.

The old gentleman stroked it from ancient times to the present, and then stroked his beard with satisfaction: yes, yes, the five virtues are repeated and carried through in this way-this is the "the end of the five virtues".