lycanthropy) is traceable to the craving
for blood which is innate in certain natures and is sometimes
accompanied by hallucination, the subject genuinely believing himself to
be a wolf (or whatever beast of prey is most common in the district),
and, in imitation of that animal's habits, committing acts of
devastation at night, selecting his victims principally from among women
and children--those, in fact, who are too feeble to resist him.

Often, however, say these Rationalists, there is no suggestion of
hallucination, the question resolving itself into one of vulgar
trickery. The anthropophagi, unable to suppress their appetite for human
food, taking advantage of the general awe in which the wolf is held by
their neighbours, dress themselves up in the skins of that beast, and
prowling about lonely, isolated spots at night, pounce upon those people
they can most easily overpower. Rumours (most probably started by the
murderers themselves) speedily get in circulation that the mangled and
half-eaten remains of the villagers are attributable to creatures, half
human and half wolf, that have been seen gliding about certain places
after dark. The simple country-folk, among whom superstitions are rife,
are only too ready to give credence to such reports; the existence of
the monsters becomes an established thing, whilst the localities that
harbour them are regarded with horror, and looked upon as the happy
hunting ground of every imaginable occult power of evil.

Now, although such an explanation of werwolves might be applicable in
certain districts of West Africa, where the native population is
excessively bloodthirsty and ignorant, it could not for one moment be
applied to werwolfery in Germany, France, or Scandinavia, where the
peasantry are, generally speaking, kindly and intelligent people, whom
one could certainly accuse neither of being sanguinary nor of possessing
any natural taste for cannibalism.

The rationalist view can therefore only be said to be feasible in
certain limited spheres, outside of which it is grotesque and
ridiculous.

Now a question that has occurred to me, and which, I fancy, may give
rise to some interesting speculation, is, whether some of the werwolves
stated to have been seen may not have been some peculiar type of
phantasm. I make this suggestion because I have seen several sub-human
and sub-animal occult phenomena in England, and have, too, met other
people who have had similar experi