This paper is, in a way, a history and a result of a good part of what I have been trying to do in my own work for a long period of time. And in thinking about the problem of what I have termed anonymity, I find myself reflecting on themes which have occupied me for the last twenty-five years. That is not to say that I have been directly, explicitly concerned with the concept of anonymity for all of that time or that I have worked on it systematically during all those years, but I think it is fair to say that the problem as I will develop it follows my own personal intellectual career from the beginning to the present time. I propose to begin by trying to trace out that career in terms of the theme of anonymity and to try to show where the problem came from in terms of my interests and how it developed.