What is the origin of a thousand miles, a trickle, and a river and a sea?

From "Encouraging Learning" (the first article of Xunzi). The original text is, there is no accumulation, no miles; If you don't accumulate small streams, you won't be a river. The article complained: "So, if you don't accumulate steps, you will take Wan Li Road; If you don't accumulate small streams, you can't become rivers and seas. "

This is a negative metaphor to illustrate the importance of accumulation. After a positive and a negative metaphor, the reason that learning pays attention to accumulation has been preliminarily clarified, but in order to explain it in depth, the article repeatedly compares "you can't take ten steps in one leap" with "Ma Xu pushes ten times and never gives up", and then compares "perseverance, perseverance, carving a stone".

This fully illustrates the great significance of "never giving up", and the truth that learning should pay attention to accumulation has been further proved. Of course, if you want to "give up" and keep accumulating, you must be single-minded and not impetuous.

The writing characteristics of "encouraging learning"

A major feature of "encouraging learning" in writing is to explain the truth and prove the argument through metaphor. Except for a few places that directly explain the truth, the whole text is almost a metaphor. In this paper, a large number of metaphors commonly used in life are used, which makes the abstract truth clear, concrete and vivid and easy for readers to accept.

Sometimes there are many parallel metaphors in the set, which explain the problem repeatedly from the same angle. This technique is called metaphor in rhetoric. There are various forms of metaphor in this paper. Sometimes similar metaphors are used to explain the problem from the same angle and emphasize the author's point of view. For example, climb high, call with the wind, fake horses, fake boats, accumulate soil into mountains, and water droplets merge into oceans.