But it is insisted that in women sentiment naturally tends toward mysticism. Among the Greeks, Spencer says, the women were more accessible than the men to religious excitation.[92] It may be replied that the greatest mystics have not been women. St. Theresas have been much less numerous than men like Plotinus (it was Plotinus who first gave the word ἔκστασις its current sense), Porphyry, Iamblicus, Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Bonaventure, Gerson, Richard de Saint Victor, Eckhart, Tauler, Swedenborg. Mysticism develops in proportion to the restriction of the individual’s activity. Women’s life, which is less active than that of men, allows more space for the development of mystic impulses and exercises of piety. But activity cures the diseases of contemplation, in especial of vain and empty contemplation in which only average and ignorant minds can take delight. Woman’s religious activity will diminish in proportion as a wider field of activity is opened up to her, and in proportion as an intellectual and æsthetic education is supplied to her and she becomes interested in all the human questions and realities of this world. It has been desired even to render political life accessible to woman, to restore to her the rights which have hitherto been denied her. M. Secrétan has recently advocated this measure, which was formerly advocated by John Stuart Mill. To do so at the present moment would be to hand over politics directly to the priesthood, who at present control women. But when by gradual degrees women’s religious emancipation shall have been completed, it is possible that a certain political emancipation may be the natural consequence of it. Her civil emancipation in any event is only a matter of time. The equality of women before the law is a necessary consequence of democratic ideas. When they shall be forced thus to occupy themselves more actively in the affairs of this world the new employment of their energy will protect them more and more from mystical tendencies. [92] Sir Rutherford Alcock says also, that in Japan it is very rare to see any other worshippers in the temples than women and children; the men are always extremely few in number and belong to the lower classes. At least five-sixths and often nine-tenths of the pilgrims who come to the temple of Juggernaut are women. Among the Sikhs the women are said to believe in more gods than the men. These examples, borrowed as they are from different races, and at different epochs, show sufficiently, in Spencer’s opinion, that, when we find an analogous state of things in Catholic countries, and even in some measure in England, we are not to attribute it solely to the education of women; the cause, he thinks, is deeper, lies in their nature. (See Spencer’s _Study of Sociology_.)