Hume's ethical project is concerned with discovering how people's nature defines moral behavior and in discovering the moral goodness that society considers to be useful. Hume's theory about the process that agents use to act is a departure from the classical Greek model in that it relies on passion and is devoid of the idea of using practical reasoning to overcome feelings of fear to accomplish a noble end. For Hume, only a person's passions can choose their ends, and he denies that reason has the ability to evaluate their ends. Hume's notions on reason greatly contradicts the vast majority of ancient and modern philosophers' beliefs, regarding the amalgamation of human emotion and reason producing the practical reasoning to guide an agent to act. Hume's anti-rationalist statement that reason cannot be the major factor producing moral action provides the basis for his entire ethical theory.