東周的教育及學術思想(三)

比孟子略後，（後世推究荀子約為紀元前三一五至二三０或三三六至二三八─六的人，約晚於孟子百餘年。）（1）戰國時期，在教育史上占有地位的另一位教育家，便是荀子。由於荀子的思想和主張，不似孟子般單純的以孔子為宗，後世研究者，對於是否應該視荀子為儒家系統，頗有疑義，甚至有人視之為法家的源始者。對於這一點，在了解荀子思想之前，最好暫且存疑，留待了解以後，再做決定。了解荀子所依據的主要資料，是現在流傳的荀子集解，本篇即用世界書局出版的唐楊倞註、清王先謙集解的版本，計二十卷三十二篇。（2）以荀子教育思想的哲學基礎，荀子思想的進歩觀點，及荀子的教育主張為主來說明。

Close to the end of Chou Dynasty， there was another Confucius contemporary， Hsun─tzu. In his book entitled Hsun─tzu， it is easy to discover the cultural tradition and Confucius thoughts. Very frequently Hsun─tzu would quote the Book of Odes as a conclusion of his discussion. It is evident that Hsun─tzu believes Chinese principles of governing a nation. Lived in the flourishing period of hundred schools， Hsun─tzu， took the advantage of absorbing various thoughts in addition to Confucius school. And he established his own theories full of improvement. He developed many concepts which had been rare in the Great Analects and Mencius. He advocated psychological points of view such as feeling and preferences mind and its functions of knowing， thinking and decision─making. He even raised the idea of classification of terms. He insisted that Li and Yi plus laws were the ways to carry out Ethics. The most important thoughts of his was that he said the Heaven was a natural phenomena and has nothing to do with human conducts. Man， he said：ought to control the nature and use the natural resources.
Hsun─tzu insists that to educate people to be virtuous is an important policy and the goal of education is to cultivate every man to be gentleman by means of teaching and principles.