Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677) has been accused of everything from an atheistic materialism to a God-centered denial of the reality of matter.  Most interpreters properly choose to steer a middle course, but serious difficulties remain.  As these difficulties largely relate to the “attributes”—one of the most important building blocks of Spinoza’s metaphysics—I argue that we can resolve them by holding that an attribute consists of a mental aspect and a non-mental aspect.  I further argue that this interpretation of the attributes leads to an improved understanding of Spinoza’s theory of the mind-body relation.