_imitation of nature._ Verism and naturalism also have afforded the spectacle of a confusion of the æsthetic fact with the processes of the natural sciences, by aiming at some sort of _experimental_ drama or romance. [Sidenote: _Criticism of ideas in art, of theses in art and of the typical._] Confusions between the methods of art and those of the philosophic sciences have been far more frequent. Thus it has often been held to be the task of art to expound concepts, to unite an intelligible with a sensible, to represent _ideas_ or _universals_; putting art in the place of science, that is, confusing the artistic function in general with the particular case in which it becomes æsthetico-logical. The theory of art as supporting _theses,_ of art considered as an individual representation exemplifying scientific laws, can be proved false in like manner. The example, as example, stands for the thing exemplified, and is thus an exposition of the universal, that is to say, a form of science, more or less popular or vulgarizing. The same may be said of the æsthetic theory of the _typical,_ when by type is understood, as it frequently is, the abstraction or the concept, and it is affirmed that art should make the _species_ shine in the _individual._ If individual be here understood by typical, we have here too a merely verbal variation. To typify would signify, in this case, to characterize; that is, to determine and to represent the individual. Don Quixote is a type; but of what is he a type, save of all Don Quixotes? A type, so to speak, of himself. Certainly he is not a type of abstract concepts, such as the loss of the sense of reality, or of the love of glory. An infinite number of personages can be thought of under these concepts, who are not Don Quixotes. In other words, we find our own impressions fully determined and realized in the expression of a poet (for example in a poetical personage). We call that expression typical, which we might call simply æsthetic. Thus poetical or artistic universals have sometimes been spoken of, only to show that the artistic product is altogether spiritual and ideal. [Sidenote: _Criticism of the symbol and of the allegory._]