It is probably as difficult for continental philosophers to envisage an 'analytical philosophy of the passions' as it was for Spinoza's contemporaries to understand how he might treat the same subject more geometrico ~. Yet, while we may regret the narrowness, the fruitless technicality, and the philistinism of analytical philosophy, there is no reason to suppose, either that the analytical school is less able to study the human soul than its rivals, or that it is more disposed to technicality and philistinism than they. Indeed, so far as those particular defects go, I believe that phenomenology is just as likely to display them. The fault lies, not so much with the particular school to which the writer happens to belong, as with the contemporary pressure which causes those without literary gifts to write and publish. Only the closing down of universities on a massive scale could remedy this situation; and that is as much as to say that it will not be remedied. Two ideas have had a decisive impact on the philosophy of mind, as practised by those working in the analytical tradition. The first is the argument given by Wittgenstein 2, against the possibility of a private language. The second is the resurrection, due largely to Hilary Putnam 3 and Saul Kripke 4, of the idea of real