 Conversely, contingency obtains in virtue of the lack of certain conceptual connections. In the case of contingent existence, an object exists contingently just in case its concept is neither connected to the concept of existence nor to something else whose concept is connected to (the concept of) existence. Hence if a mode is conceived in such a way that it is not conceived in relation to something involving existence, it will exist contingently and not necessarily (as per Iax7). The point isn’t just that it would be conceived as contingent. On this account, how a thing is conceived partly fixes its modal status. In explaining modal features in terms of an involvement relation between concepts, Spinoza provides an answer to (3) from the previous section and thereby identifies himself with a long and distinguished tradition of philosophers who explain modal facts by appeal to conceptual relations.