Professor John T. Noonan, Jr.,' has shown that some forms of legal reasoning have the potential to dehumanize persons through the use of conceptual "legal masks."2 This striking metaphor puts into question familiar and fundamental aspects of law and legal processes. Professor Noonan presents an eloquent plea, supported by well-chosen illustrations, for greater consideration of persons, not to the exclusion of rules of law, but to overcome the tendency of the legal process to ignore its individual participants. Professor Noonan's insights have great appeal. His criticism may be justifiably leveled at the entire legal system. To carry the discussion one step further, many concepts, whether legal or not, may have the intrinsic capacity of masking human reality. The concepts "fact" and "reality,";for example, are no less amorphous than legal concepts'and are equally amenable to being used as masks, perhaps more so because they appear to be clear. The concept of "property" has been used to enslave people, as Noonan shows, but so have the concepts of "love" and "freedom," and sometimes more effectively. The problem may be insoluble.