 Let us move to an answer by wondering who or what it is that is imagined into existence? Is it the voice of society, representing established social attitudes? At times in the first edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith comes close to saying that it is. In the second edition Smith is clear that this is not the role of the impartial spectator for the latter can, and occasionally does, speak against established social attitudes. Nor can the judgment of the impartial spectator be reduced to the judgment of society, even where those two judgments coincide. Nevertheless the impartial spectator exists because of real live spectators. Were it not for our discovery that while we are judging other people, those same people are judging us, we would not form the idea of a spectator judging us impartially.