Quote from The Essential Guide To Werewolf Literature

"One of A. Merritt's short stories was 'The Drone', in which a group of explorers recount the uncanny experiences they have had with the phenomenon of shapeshifting in various parts of the globe. During the course of their anecdotes about were-hyenas, leopard men, bird people, and the like, one of the explorers conjectures that 'man's consciousness may share the brain with other consciousnesses -- beast or bird or what not... all life is one... a thinking and conscious force of which the trees, the beasts, the flowers, germs, and man and everything living are parts, just as the billions of living cells in a man are parts of him. And that under certain conditions the parts may be interchangeable.' This, he thinks, may be the source of the ancient tales of dryads and the nymphs, the harpies, and the werewolves and other were-beast."

~ excerpt from The Essential Guide To Werewolf Literature by Brian J. Frost, page 171-172