Original source spelling · punctuation belongs to the digital witness · pronunciation tools follow your language focus.
人何以知道？曰：心。心何以知？曰：虛壹而靜。
By what do people know the way? By the heart-mind. How does it know? By being receptive, unified, and still.
zimai · AI-assisted editorial notes · Editorial pilot · not independently reviewed · CC BY-SA 4.0A route through this passage
52 Han characters · 23 distinct forms · 12 units separated by the witness’s punctuation
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- Test one unit.
人何以知道？
Mark a possible predicate and its participants. Record what you have supplied rather than found explicitly in the text. - Reconstruct the argument. Connect the units in your own words. Where does a description, question, contrast, or consequence depend on your interpretation?
Investigate 7 written forms in this passage
Matched by spelling. These are candidate reading procedures, not assigned grammatical analyses.
Watch recurrence: 心 × 5 而 × 4 未 × 3 嘗 × 3 不 × 3 也 × 3. Repetition of a graph need not mean repetition of a sense.
Computed from this exact witness · 1 contextual editorial excerpt also available. The guide is a set of reading prompts, not a translation. Sources & methods
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1 · Explain it in your own words
2 · Recover the wording
Select a source unit, then hide the passage and reconstruct it. This checks textual recall, not understanding.
3 · Explain, then revisit
How does the second question deepen the first?
Compare the editorial answer
It moves from identifying the knowing faculty to asking how that faculty works.
zimai editorial draft · not independently reviewed. Applies to 人何以知道？曰：心。心何以知？曰：虛壹而靜。
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Each connection states its purpose. Comparisons are editorial learning aids; shared wording alone does not prove influence.
Argument contrastFocus in an account and in a storyXunzi answers a question about knowing with receptivity, unity, and stillness; Zhuangzi’s statement emerges from a story of practiced cicada-catching. This editorial comparison connects accounts of attention without identifying their aims or treating either as modern experimental psychology.
Shared wording
Computed exact phrases in the pinned witnesses. These links do not assign a sense or assert borrowing.
荀子 · 解蔽篇第二十一有所謂虛而有知，知而有志。志也者、臧也，然而有所謂虛，不以所已臧害所將受謂之虛。
荀子 · 解蔽篇第二十一有所謂一、同時兼知之。同時兼知之，兩也，然而有所謂一，不以夫一害此一謂之壹。
荀子 · 解蔽篇第二十一心未嘗不心、臥則夢，偷則自行，使之則謀。故心未嘗不動也，然而有所謂靜，不以夢劇亂知謂之靜。
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Shared teaching construction · an editorial learning connection, not evidence of common authorship or origin.
論語 · Read the relationship between clauses學而時習之論語 · Notice an object before its verb未之有也論語 · Read the relationship between clauses本立而道生論語 · Locate the unknown其斯之謂與Edition, source, and reuse
- Work
- 荀子 · Xunzi
- Attribution
- Traditionally associated with Xun Kuang; the received collection contains multiple textual layers.
- Digital witness
- Kanseki Repository · KR3a0002 · base edition tls
- Contributors
- Kanseki Repository (Kanripo) contributors; upstream base-edition labels retained in each original file.
- Source position
- KR3a0002_021.txt, lines 267–276. XUN 21:5d:1, Beida p.351;Knoblock 3:104
- Version
e18a27621ef434940a368defd29e00eee205dfd2- Reuse
- CC BY-SA 4.0. Text extraction and teaching additions share this licence.
- Text policy
- Source spelling and punctuation retained. Encoding headers, page markers, paragraph markers, whitespace, and leading section numbers are removed from the reading view. No silent script conversion or textual correction.
- Teaching
- zimai · AI-assisted editorial notes. English renderings are excerpt-level reading aids, not a full published translation. Editorial pilot · not independently reviewed.
Source-file SHA-256: 8021f00e9aa6a4c9680bcd1deb1d6df5a1c2ffc5d1dc4a1377b05ea00a478a34. A source comment that cites a translator is an upstream reference, not the attribution of a translation imported here.