  The above concerns the acquisition of existence, or actual being. Yet independently of existence, and preceding it, essence is already constituted as such in its specific being: the esse proprium that Avicenna attributes to a res in virtue of its certitudo. It is well-known that Henry refers to this being as esse essentiae. Despite the ultra-essentialist interpretation of Henry's metaphysics that began with Suárez, the syntagma esse essentiae does not designate a separate being, but only the fact that a res thus constituted has an objective content and so is objectively possible; that is, it can be placed in act by God. Indeed, not every res conceivable by the human intellect corresponds to a nature that can be actualized. The being of essence thus coincides with the possibility, or the ability, to receive actual existence that a purely imagined res does not have. In other words, esse essentiae is what separates a mere figment from a res proper, an essence, or to use Avicenna's terminology, a “nature”.