The greatest question concerning Werewolves, and one debated since the Middle Ages by learned writers and doctors, is whether Werewolves can actually change their forms, or only think they have changed them; whether, as a result of their nature or through the power of the DEVIL (q.v.), they are actually capable of transformation, or rather suffer from a delusion (Lycanthropy) in which they believe themselves to be so transformed, though they remain human. The psychological explanation came to predominate, though it explains far fewer recorded instances than the physiological. Across one end of the cool dusty-gray attic Pierce had run a rope, and on the rope had hung four old drapes he had found there, flowered with maroon roses; behind them, lit by the pointed attic window, was the clubhouse of the Invisible College—not of the physical chapter, but of the other, the one that consisted of Pierce alone. Sometimes the adventures that the College undertook up here were told of in the regular nighttime meetings: sometimes not.Augustine thought that what is transformed is the phantasticum, a sort of spectral double that goes out in a form able to be seen, while the sleeping person dreams its experiences.
