This discussion first considers why Hume highlights the argument that reason alone is not a motive, given that few, if any, of his predecessors actually professed that reason could motivate without passion. Second, it ponders, but rejects, the idea that Hume’s “Inertness of Reason” argument equivocates. Third, it rebuts the view that Hume allows that beliefs, products of reason, can motivate, even if reason cannot. If Hume thinks beliefs can motivate, then: (1) his thesis that reason contributes to motivation without originating motives, will depend on the equivocation earlier dismissed; (2) we have no explanation how actions result from competing motives; and (3) he undermines his dictum that an active principle cannot be founded on an inactive one. There is textual evidence for an alternative reading of Hume, on which beliefs, even about sources of pleasure and pain, trace their force to sentiments that depend upon taste.