  As we said earlier, medieval philosophers share the intuition that the acquisition (or loss) of relations can occur without any real change on the part of their subject. To explain this intuition, some non-reductivists think it is enough to say that a relation can be acquired (or lost) without its subject undergoing any real change with respect to its absolute accidents. Thus, the example of Socrates’s coming to be shorter than Simmias is sometimes glossed by saying that, with respect to absolute accidents, it is true that Socrates comes to be shorter than Simmias solely in virtue of a real change in Simmias. Nonetheless, if we consider Socrates’s relative accidents as well, such non-reductivists will say that Socrates has, in fact, undergone a real ‘relative’ change—that is, a real change with respect to one of his relations.  [28]