Collingwood’s discussion of the ontological argument in An Essay on Philosophical Method gave rise to a lively epistolary exchange with Ryle (the exchange is published in the 2005 edition of An Essay on Philosophical Method). The correspondence was triggered by the publication of an article in Mind by Ryle (1935) which attacked Collingwood’s sympathetic appraisal of the ontological proof on the grounds that there are no such things as propositions which are both necessary and existential, i.e.,