 As we’ll see, this is the seed for the challenge that continues to haunt proposals about the analytic to this day: what explanatory difference is there between “analytic” claims and simply widely and firmly held beliefs, such as that The earth has existed for many years or There have been black dogs? We’ll consider some proposals —and their problems— in due course, but it’s important to bear in mind that, if no difference can be sustained, then it’s difficult to see the significance of the logicist program or of the claims of (strictly) “analytic” philosophy generally.