teaching force is declared legally unfit to vote or hold office, and is
yet employed to train our future citizens. But on the intellectual side
we demand positive proof of fitness. Thus it is fair to say that our
modern education deals almost exclusively with knowledge.

Knowledge, in the past, has nearly always been considered much as we
consider dynamite to-day. It was a dangerous force, useful to a ruling
class, and hence preserved in the hands of a cult, generally a
priesthood; but it was thought capable of working endless mischief in
the hands of ignorant people. Through all the pages of history we find
individuals, and weaker groups, driven away from the accumulated
treasure; and if detected in their desire to know, especially if they
sought knowledge through original investigation, they were branded with
such titles of disgrace as "wizard" or "heretic;" and, as a warning to
others, they were often burned in the public square or buried alive.

Women, as an inferior class, were especially restrained from learning.
Knowledge would breed discontent in them; it would make them question
the binding power of the conventions and beliefs which held them in
their place; and it would show them how to achieve their freedom, and
might even encourage them to assume leadership. Here and there,
individual women gained the training necessary for leadership, as in the
cases of Sappho, Aspasia or Hypatia; but the great mass of women was
sternly repressed. Eve leads a long line of women martyrs who, across
the ages, have paid a great price for their desire to eat of the tree of
knowledge. For herself, she might have paid the price but, with subtle
understanding of women, the penalty was made to involve all whom they
loved; the terrors of that price have held the sex in restraint ever
since. Eurydice, Pandora, Eve, Lot's wife and Bluebeard's wife have in
turn served as awful warnings. After a time it came to be understood by