 using ‘the ether’ as a singular term for the light-bearing medium posited by nineteenth century physicists. The reason why (S) is true is that, as we now know, the ether does not exist. According to classical logic, however, (S) is false, because it implies the existence of the ether. Free logic allows such statements to be true despite the non-referring singular term. Indeed, it allows even statements of the form \({\sim}\exists x\) \(x=t\) (e.g., “the ether does not exist”) to be true, though in classical logic, which presumes that \(t\) refers to an object in the quantificational domain, they are self-contradictory.