 While some authors take the extreme position that there is only a mental distinction between essence and existence, Henry of Ghent develops a modified version of Avicenna’s theory. He distinguishes between essence in itself and as existing, that is, existing in the mind or in the external world. But he attributes a specific kind of existence to the essence in itself (Quodlibet I, 9 and III, 9): esse essentiae (“essential being”), which is the essence’s eternal relation to God as its cause. The esse existentiae, in contrast, is the essence’s actual existence. Henry thus develops a theory of how essences exist prior to their actual existence in the mind or in the world, enlarging on a brief and tentative reference in Avicenna’s Metaphysics I.5 to the “proper existence” (esse proprium) of the essences.