... taken as referring to the substance as an individual, or the qualities that it possesses: "But after all, definition, like 'what a thing is' has several meanings [...] for as 'is' is predicable of all things, not however in the same sense, but of one sort of thing primarily and others in a secondary way, so too the 'what' belongs simply to substance, but in a limited sense to the other categories" Metaphysics (.41030a18-24 If we consider this to be essence, i.e. 'what-a-thing-does', we are primarily addressing the substance, yet we could also suggest that essence is a specific something; a characteristic, on which all other attributes invariably depend. In this way, essence includes the properties of a thing that it needs to endure throughout time and change. For example, a dancer cannot persist without being, i.e. a human, because s/he relies on a basic subject for survival, and so Aristotle thought there ...

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