 Neither the feelings we seek to have nor the standards by which we judge feelings need be identical with the feelings and standards that are actually current in our society. We know that many actual spectators misjudge our situations out of ignorance or interest, so we seek to judge, and act on, just the feelings that a well-informed and impartial spectator would have (TMS 129, 135). Smith thinks that to sympathize with another’s feelings is to approve of those feelings (17), and to sympathize as we think an impartial spectator would is to approve morally of those feelings. Moral norms thus express the feelings of an impartial spectator. A feeling, whether on the part of a person motivated to take an action or on the part of a person who has been acted upon by others, is worthy of moral approval if and only if an impartial spectator would sympathize with that feeling. (Again, people acted upon are subject to moral judgment as well as agents; reactions can be judged as well as actions.) When achieving a morally right feeling is difficult, we call that achievement “virtuous”; otherwise, we describe people as acting or failing to act within the bounds of “propriety” (25). Thus do moral norms and ideals, and the judgments by which we guide ourselves towards those norms and ideals, arise out of the process by which we try to achieve mutual sympathy.