ulated
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
women that they should fix their eyes on their husbands and never look
forward or backward, lest they lose their Eden and drag those whom they
loved after them to destruction.

Of course, if women could not learn they could not teach; at least, they
could not teach where it was necessary to impart knowledge; and so their
share in formal education has been slight, until our own time. Young
children have been considered their special charge, and the care and
culture of infancy and young childhood have always rested in the hands
of mothers, grandmothers, aunts and female servants. Beyond these early
years, however, woman's part has been restricted to emphasizing, mainly
with girls, the dogmas and practices of caste, kitchen and church.

These were the conditions which prevailed through early Oriental and
Classical times. Christianity brought women some degree of intellectual
freedom, but it also imposed new forms of restraint. Its fundamental
teachings, based as they were on a belief in individual values, were
favorable to the extension of knowledge and to the opening of
opportunity for all. The Church, however, shaped under the
half-civilized conditions of the Middle Ages,