 An important group of problems for the modal-existential analysis of ontological dependence emerges from essential properties (at least if they are considered as distinct from modal properties, as argued in Fine 1994a). What could be a plausible example of an essential property of an individual object, say, Socrates? Let us assume that properties are to be conceived of as property instances, such as the particular redness of a certain apple. Of course, an apple can change its color, so that this is not an example of an essential property of the apple. But what about—in the case of Socrates—his humanity (as it were, his particular being human)? Certainly, if there is such a thing as the particular humanity of Socrates, he cannot lose it without ceasing to exist. Perhaps we can deny that Socrates’s particular humanity is anything distinct from Socrates himself: after all, its existence necessarily coincides with his. Properties are commonly said to depend for their existence upon the entities that possess them. One might propose to state this in the form of a principle, with the help of  (EDR),  as follows: