 In defending presentism, we face a problem of direct reference with respect to merely past entities. (Although, on one reading, it’s merely an instance of the problem of “cross-time relations” introduced in  §4.)  It seems that we can and do refer successfully to entities that have existed and exist no longer, entities that don’t exist at all, given presentism. But, if this is so, then the past entities that we refer to (and which are related to our linguistic items) must exist, contrary to presentism. Presentists face a difficult choice. That is, they must reject one of the following four claims, which form an apparently inconsistent set: (i) we successfully refer to merely past entities, (ii) reference is a relation, (iii) for a relation to obtain, the relata must exist, and (iv) there are no merely past entities (i.e., past entities don’t exist). Presentists can’t deny (iv), since that amounts to a rejection of presentism. But it proves almost equally difficult to reject any of the other claims, given their independent plausibility.