Oh, ye immortal gods! what is theogony?
  Oh, thou too, mortal man! what is philanthropy?
Oh, world! which was and is, what is cosmogony?
  Some people have accused me of misanthropy;
And yet I know no more than the mahogany
  That forms this desk of what they mean — lycanthropy
I comprehend; for, without transformation,
Men become wolves on any slight occasion.

— from Don Juan, canto ix, stanza xx by Byron