it seems impossible to doubt that they have arisen from myths
devised for the purpose of explaining the obscure phenomena of
mental disease. If this be so, they afford an excellent
collateral illustration of the belief in werewolves. The same
mental habits which led men to regard the insane or epileptic
person as a changeling, and which allowed them to explain
catalepsy as the temporary departure of a witch's soul from
its body, would enable them to attribute a wolf's nature to
the maniac or idiot with cannibal appetites. And when the
myth-forming process had got thus far, it would not stop short
of assigning to the unfortunate wretch a tangible lupine body;
for all ancient mythology teemed with precedents for such a
transformation.

It remains for us to sum up,--to tie into a bunch the keys
which have helped us to penetrate into the secret causes of
the werewolf superstition. In a previous paper we saw what a
host of myths, fairy-tales, and superstitious observances have
sprung from attempts to interpret one simple natural
phenomenon,--the descent of fire from the clouds. Here, on the
other hand, we see what a heterogeneous multitude of mythical
elements may combine to build up in course of time a single
enormous superstition, and we see how curiously fact and fancy
have co-operated in keeping the superstition from falling. In
the first place the worship of dead ancestors with wolf totems
originated the notion of the transformation of men into divine
or superhuman wolves; and this notion was confirmed by the
ambiguous explanation of the storm-wind as the rushing of a
troop of dead men's souls or as the howling of wolf-like
monsters. Mediaeval Christianity retained these conceptions,