汉字大约有五千年以上的历史,人们在使用中,逐渐意识到文字书写所具有的美感,并进而对书写有意识地加以控制,这便是书法的诞生。中国人对文字书写的艺术性很早便加以了关注,但最早的记录,是东汉赵壹的《非草书》。从那时以来,留下了大量关于书法的文献,其中相当一部分是对书法内涵的阐述。到唐代,这些阐述已经汇集成一个颇具规模的意义体系。唐代以后,其内容还在不断增添,直到清代后期,这个体系还有重要的扩展,如刘熙载对「书如其人」的陈述(《艺概·书概》)。 Chinese characters have a history of more than 5,000 years. People gradually realize the beauty of writing and then consciously control the writing. This is the birth of calligraphy. Chinese people have paid close attention to the artistry of writing for a long time, but the earliest record is the “non-cursive book” of the Eastern Han Dynasty Zhao Yi. Since then, there has been a great deal of literature on calligraphy, a considerable part of which is about the meaning of calligraphy. By the Tang Dynasty, these expositions had converged into a meaningful system of meaning. After the Tang Dynasty, its content continued to grow. Until the late Qing Dynasty, there was still an important expansion of the system. For example, Liu Xizai’s statement of “the book is like the human”.