In China’s history of exegetics, scholars have consistently attached importance to exact interpretation of classics. Zhu Xi was the first among all the scholars who systematically elaborated on the methodology of reading and understanding. Schleiermacher was the founder of the modern Hermeneutics in the west. This essay is a comparative study of their conceptions of Interpretation. Zhu Xi considered the explanation of the meaning of the text as the first objective of the explanation of classics. In his opinion, the very meaning of the text underlies the text, and it is not advisable to seek the meaning of the text from beyond the text. The ultimate effort Zhu Xi made to interpret classics was to establish an explanatory boundary for each of the main characters. His methodology of understanding the meaning of the text is characteristic of both the methodology of analysis and that of synthesis. Schleiermacher places explanation of the original meaning of text in the prior position too. This method is the analysis of grammar. And, the original meaning of text is expounded by way of sentence (parts) and text (the whole) in circle of understanding. As the text can in fact be explained in a variety of ways, therefore Zhu Xi believed that understanding the meaning of the text can only be regarded as the basis of the author’s original intention, and people should self-examine their daily events in line with the context so as to understand the original intention of saints. Schleiermacher announced that the author’s original intention is the fundamental purpose of explanation, and his method is a psychological “transform of sentiments”; Zhu Xi thought that reading and understanding classics is only a means of the reader's self-comprehension and self-accomplishment. The reader’s comprehension of the meaning is his further application and elaboration made on the contrast with his own experience and on the basis of the meaning of the text and the author’s original intention. This is the ultimate objective of reading classics with comprehension, for what saints of different times have said is only a sprout, and it is the fresh meaning the reader comprehends that is the expansion of the author’s original intention and the very meaning of the text, which grows from the reader’s personal application of the saints’ principles, and implementation of the principles directed by what the saints have said. Schleiermacher admits, although the understanding of the reader can surpass the author’s original intention, he finally considered that the new meaning by the reader is summed up in the meaning of text.