 The economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723–90) traces a sharp distinction between vocal and instrumental music. He holds that the greater the disparity between medium and imitated object, the more pleasure an imitative art will occasion (Of the Nature of that Imitation that Takes Place in what are called The Imitative Arts, part I, 6–7). Vocal music may thus only slightly resemble impassioned speech, but precisely because of this it will delight us when it successfully imitates it (Of the Nature of that Imitation, part II, 12). Instrumental music, however, lacking a text and deprived of vocal articulation, cannot imitate any object successfully, as we can hardly ever recognize anything in it unless prompted by a description (Of the Nature of that Imitation, part II, 17). Smith develops an alternative view of musical expression, which he illustrates with an interesting parallel. Just as a natural landscape may be gloomy without imitating anything, so may music. In both cases the description ‘gloomy’ ascribes a dispositional property, that is, it refers to the capacity the landscape and piece of music have of making us gloomy (Of the Nature of that Imitation, part II, 23). Once more, expression and imitation go separate ways.