 Shaftesbury puts affection in the driver’s seat because he believes affection alone can motivate. He never states outright what Hume would explicitly argue for: that reason on its own is motivationally inert. But the Humean claim is implied by what Shaftesbury does say. Throughout the first version of the Inquiry, he attributes every instance of motivation to affection. He says that reason is necessary “to secure a right application of the Affections,” but there he is granting to reason merely the instrumental role of discovering what will best benefit the species (C 2.35). Affection remains that which motivates us to pursue that benefit. Shaftesbury says as well that the motivational force of an affection can be directly opposed only by the motivational force of “contrary Affections” (C 2.44). If a person has a motivating affection, she will “necessarily act according to it” unless it is opposed by some other affection (C 2.52). “[T]here is no speculative Opinion, Persuasion or Belief, which is capable immediately or directly to exclude or destroy” a natural affection (C 2.44). “[N]othing beside contrary Affection, by frequent check and control, can operate upon it, so as either to diminish it in part, or destroy it in the whole” (C 2.44) Shaftesbury acknowledges that beliefs can cause alterations in the affections, and that the altered affections can lead us in directions opposite to those we’d been motivated to follow before. If I come to believe a particularly charismatic person is a great benefactor to humanity, I may then become motivated to emulate behavior of hers to which I would otherwise have been opposed. If I come to believe that a particular group of people is trying to destroy humanity, I may become motivated to attack them in ways that would previously have offended my sense of right and wrong. But belief’s role in motivation is once again instrumental. It operates on my motivation only “indirectly, by the intervention of opposite or of favourable Affections causally excited by any such Belief” (C 2.45). Affection is the source of all motivational force. Belief on its own mounts no motivational push-back. These ideas are a clear influence on Hutcheson and Hume, who also hold that all motivation is sentimental and that therefore morality is based on sentiment.