 Lewis assumed that modal statements in ordinary language can be analysed in terms of quantification over possible worlds and individuals: ‘it is possible that there are talking donkeys’ is analysed as ‘there are possible worlds at which there are talking donkeys’.  Lewis’s modal realism promises to turn this into a reductive analysis of modality. Statements about what is or is not the case at some possible world are ultimately reduced to non-modal statements.  That there is a world with talking donkeys, for example, means that there is a spatiotemporally isolated aggregate of things that has a genuine talking donkey as part.