The aristocrats were not only the political rulers and landlords, but also the only persons who had a chance to receive an education. Thus the houses of the feudal lords were not only centers of political and economic power, but also centers of learning. Attached to them were officers who possessed specialized knowledge along various lines. But the common people, for their part, had no chance to become educated, so that among them there were no men of learning. This is the fact behind Liu Hsin's theory that in the early Chou dynasty "there was no separation between officers and teachers".
贵族不仅是政治统治者、地主，而且是唯一有机会受教育的阶级。因此，诸侯的家宅不仅是政治和经济权力的中心，还是文化的中心：各种各样有专长、有某项知识的人，都要投靠诸侯，指望为诸侯所用。至于普通百姓，既没有受教育的机会，自然也没有文化知识，因此在他们中间也没有出现什么学者。这就是刘歆所说西周时期“吏师不分”的历史背景。This feudal system was formally abolished by the First Emperor of the Ch'in dynasty in 221 B.C. But hundreds of years before that, the system had already begun to disintegrate, whereas thousands of years later, economic remnants of feudalism still remained in the form of the power of the landlord class.中国的这种封建制度到公元前二二一年秦朝建立后被废除。在它被正式废除前几百年间，这种制度已经逐渐瓦解，而两千年后，这种封建制度的残余，还保留在地主阶级的权势之中。Historians of modern time are still not agreed as to what were the causes of the disintegration of the feudal system. Nor is it within the scope of this chapter to discuss these causes. For the present purpose, it is sufficient to say that in Chinese history the period between the seventh and third centuries B.C. was one of great social and political transformation and change.现代的历史学家对于中国封建制度何以瓦解的原因，迄今没有一致意见。这里由于篇幅所限，也不可能探讨这些原因，但我们只要记住一点就够了，即公元前七世纪到前三世纪——春秋战国时期——是中国社会政治大转变的时期。
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