Yes, and it cost his reputation dearly, because Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) was to make great fun of him for it in his famous article “On Denoting” (1905). Still, other twentieth-century philosophers, such as Terence Parsons (1939–) and Roderick Chisholm (1916–1999) were to defend the consistency of Meinong’s ontology and the usefulness of being able to talk about non-existent objects. Meinong believed that nonexistent objects include the merely possible, as well as the impossible. He thought that existence was just a property of objects, like smell or shape, so that, for example, fictional characters lack that property, while Meinong himself had it.