  Some philosophers, such as Aquinas, assume that the departure from the traditional Aristotelian characterization of relations is required only in non-paradigmatic relational situations. By the end of the Middle Ages, however, this sort of departure is so common and familiar that philosophers no longer feel the need to regard it as exceptional. Thus, Ockham eventually adopts a view according to which all relations depend for their existence on the activity of the mind. Indeed, things are so changed by the time of Ockham that he feels free not only to reject the traditional Aristotelian characterization of relations, but also to modify the standard medieval alternative to it. On his preferred characterization, relations are the items corresponding, not to all of our relational concepts, but to just one of them—namely, the concept ‘relation’. As Ockham sees it, moreover, the concept ‘relation’ is a term of second intention—that is to say, a term to which only concepts correspond. Thus, even though Ockham insists that many predications of the form ‘aRb’ are true independently of the mind, he nonetheless maintains that properly speaking relations exist only in the mind as  concepts.[42]  This helps to explain why he often expresses his view using such otherwise unintelligible formulas as: “This white thing really is similar, even though similarity is not really in this white thing” (Quodl. VI, q. 22 in Opera Theologica ix, 669).