 It is in the context of addressing this question that Shaftesbury develops his ideas of the moral sense—i.e., his view that within every human is the means to understand morality and act in accord with it—and the conclusion he draws from this is that one’s capacity to realize virtue is independent of one’s religious belief. Our moral sense naturally leads us to virtue (C 2.16–18 and 25–6), and atheism does nothing at all to damage that natural tendency (C 2.27). Shaftesbury thus denies “that it is impossible for an Atheist to be virtuous,” contending instead that some