  Albert's position was defended after Aquinas by Giles of Rome, who wrote an extensive literal commentary on the Posterior Analytics in 1285, with many questions embedded in it, as well as an opusculum What is the Middle Term in Demonstration (1276-77). Giles follows Albert closely. Thomas had argued that Albert's candidate for the highest sort of demonstration could not be accepted, because it assumed as its major premise that the definition of the attribute belongs to the subject. This, however, is demonstrable, for the definition of the attribute belongs to the subject only because of the subject's essential nature, if it in fact always belongs to the subject, and if it does not always belong to the subject, then the demonstration needs an additional premise, which is not a necessary truth at all, to the effect that the external conditions needed for the subject to have its attribute are present. So prior to the proposed demonstration is a demonstration that the definition of the attribute belongs to the subject, because it belongs to whatever has the real definition of the subject. Giles's objection to this is that the major premise in such a demonstration is, as it were, tautologous, there being no real distinction between the subject and its essence, and so the purported demonstration begs the question. In order to avoid begging the question, both premisses would have to be such that there is a real distinction between subject and predicate. The argument had been made against Albert's position that the definition of the attribute and the attribute itself were identical, so that Albert's candidate for demonstration of the highest sort begged the question, but Giles (and Ockham after him) points out that the definition of the attribute, being a causal definition of something whose existence depends on other things, refers obliquely to things other than the attribute itself, and so is not in fact really identical with it. The same point cannot be made in defense of the affirmation of the real definition of the subject of the subject, and so Giles turned the tables on his opponents.