Nourishing qi has been said by many people. . Time, it should be Mencius. And sucher. Belongs to pre-Qin Confucianism.

Mencius inherited and developed Confucius' determination and constant thought, and thought that the most important problem for a person was determination. The king of Qi put Mencius among them. "What do you want?" Mencius said, "Hold on to your ambition". It means to be ambitious. The prince added, "What is Shangzhi?" Mencius replied, "Just doing righteousness." Born in benevolence and walked in righteousness is called Gao Zhi. "

Mencius, like Confucius, requires students to set lofty ideals and grand goals, have their own ideals, and fulfill their obligations for social development. Confucius called this "killing one's body to become a human being". Mencius called this "sacrifice one's life for righteousness". Mencius said, "Life is what I want, and righteousness is what I want." You can't have it both ways, and those who give up their lives for righteousness are also. "I like life as well as morality. If I can't combine, I will preserve my morality even if I sacrifice my life. When there is a contradiction between life and death, honor and humiliation, people with lofty ideals would rather die than be humiliated. Although death is abhorrent, there are many more abominable behaviors than death, so we should not escape death and live, so we should give up personal happiness and even life to realize our moral ideals. It can be seen that Mencius believes that moral life is more important than personal happiness and personal life.

The difference between Mencius and Confucius is that Mencius put forward the relationship between ambition and "nourishing qi"

What is "Qi"? Mencius believes that "Qi" is something that fills the human body, can affect the body movement, and can also react to the mind and morality, which is equivalent to the "Qi" of "Wei Ying's Qi and Blood" in traditional Chinese medicine. , a little simple materialism. Mencius believed that as long as ordinary people pay attention to "nourishing qi", they can change qualitatively through the accumulation of quantity, and gradually form the so-called "noble qi" in saints, that is, righteousness.

Mencius' theory of nourishing qi shows the role of highly advocating rational consciousness and firm ambition. So after a long period of moral cultivation, his "noble spirit" has actually become a lofty spiritual realm with high consciousness and firm ambition. He believes that with this realm, not only the rich and the poor are inseparable, but also the fortunes of life and death can be ignored. Such a person can be described as a gentleman with indomitable spirit. As a moral exercise, it is of positive significance.

[Propose] This was put forward by Mencius in Mencius on Ugliness. He said, "I know what I say, and I am good at cultivating my lofty spirit." [Connotation] Mencius believes that the author must first have the inner beauty of spiritual character and cultivate "noble spirit" (a noble spiritual temperament meaning formed by noble moral quality) in order to have beautiful and correct words. This kind of thought affects literary creation, so it is emphasized that writers should strengthen their personality cultivation in order to write good literary works. [Influence] Mencius' theory of "knowing words and nourishing qi" grasped the most essential personality implication of human beings, and was widely quoted by later literary theories, forming a long tradition of taking qi as the text in the history of China's literary theory, which had a great influence on China's literary creation and criticism.