John Silence held up a restraining hand. "A werewolf," he said, "is a
true psychical fact of profound significance, however absurdly it may
have been exaggerated by the imaginations of a superstitious peasantry
in the days of unenlightenment, for a werewolf is nothing but the
savage, and possibly sanguinary, instincts of a passionate man scouring
the world in his fluidic body, his passion body, his body of desire. As
in the case at hand, he may not know it--"
"It is not necessarily deliberate, then?" Maloney put in quickly, with
relief.
"--It is hardly ever deliberate. It is the desires released in sleep
from the control of the will finding a vent. In all savage races it has
been recognised and dreaded, this phenomenon styled 'Wehr Wolf,' but
to-day it is rare. And it is becoming rarer still, for the world grows
tame and civilised, emotions have become refined, desires lukewarm, and
few men have savagery enough left in them to generate impulses of such
intense force, and certainly not to project them in animal form.
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