Excerpt from The Mystics, Ascetics, and Saints of India: A Study of Sadhuism, With an Account of the Yogis, Sanyasis, Bairagis, and Other Strange Hindu Sectarians Biologists teach that the body of every human being is an aggregation of various and innumerable protoplasmic cells which are ever undergoing changes, constructive and destructive. And yet we can plainly see that each man, though perceptibly changing with the passing years, persistently retains to the end a marked individuality, together with corporeal and mental characteristics peculiarly his own. So, too, is it with each race of men and the comparatively short-lived units of which it is made up. Of the latter, some are, at every moment of time, passing away and giving place to newer and slightly modified ones; but the race as a whole, though thus steadily undergoing mutation - perhaps suffering decay - with the fleeting centuries, still holds fast certain physical and psychological traits, its special heritage and possession, which have in the past differentiated it from all other races, and will continue to do so as long as it enjoys a separate existence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.