  In the Critical Reflections, the resemblance theory is crucial in explaining how music can be, like painting and poetry, an imitative art. It does so by resembling and, consequently, imitating “natural signs of the passions”. Du Bos also believes that music can imitate sounds in nature. He writes that “There is truth in a symphony, composed to imitate a tempest, when the music of the symphony, its harmony and its rhythm, make us hear a noise similar to the tumult of the wind and the roaring waves, which clash with each other or break against the rocks.” (1.45) (Here the word ‘symphony’ means instrumental music. It does not refer to a symphony in the modern sense of the word.) Notice that, on Du Bos’s view, even purely instrumental music can be imitative.