But the æsthetic judgment itself is not the mere intuitive reproduction of the work of art, made possible by what we call historical criticism in the narrow sense of the word, that is, by interpretation and comment. These are the antecedent of the æsthetic judgment, which consists in a logical proposition of the form: "A is art," or "A is not art," "A is art in a b c, A is not art in d e f"; or again: "There is a fact, A, which is a work of art," "There is a fact, A, which is falsely believed to be a work of art." The æsthetic judgment, like all other judgments, establishes a relation between a particular, concrete fact, and a universal category, which is that of art. And, like all other judgments, it is at the same time a judgment of value and an historical judgment, which is the obvious consequence of Croce's identification of value and fact. Æsthetic criticism therefore coincides with the history of the æsthetic activity, with the history of poetry or art. A frequent reaction to Croce's æsthetics, and to its implications in the theory of criticism, especially among literary critics, is a sense of irritation caused by the loss of the so-called standards of judgment. It would be interesting to analyze these supposed standards, which generally are not explicitly enunciated (probably because their clear enunciation would manifest their true nature, and annul them as standards of æsthetic judgment), but only more or less obscurely referred to with a mixture of pride and reverence. They would then show themselves to be the critical duplicates of the various æsthetic errors which we have already discussed. If the standards of which the critics speak are, as is often the case, moral or intellectual ideals, it is clear that Croce's æsthetics does not question their validity, but only their application. There is a large number of literary critics, who are such only in name, and whose real interests are intellectual or moral, critics of thought and of the ethical life, and not of art. They use works of art as documents and undoubtedly works of art are, in the unity of the human spirit, documents of intellectual and moral life; but their error begins when they confuse the issues, and censure or praise the art of the past, or try to influence the art of the future, with criteria which are no longer intellectual or moral, but, because they have been transposed outside their legitimate sphere, intellectualistic and moralistic.