Passion and Motivation

According to Spinoza, the active principle that determines all behavior is the endeavor to persist in one's being.  Entailed in the principle is the endeavor to maintain or increase one's strength, and to correct any decrease in strength.  Now, whether an Emotion consists in an increase in strength, a decrease in strength, or a maintaining of strength, it is a passive condition.  Hence, the motive power to modify an Emotion can not come from an Emotion, but from only the active principle.  On that basis, Hume's error is to attribute motive power to a Passion, despite the plain connotation of passivity in the term itself.  The root of his error is to reduce a complex, derivative, passive experience to a simple, irreducible, dynamic experiential datum.  Or, in other words, his concept of Passion is inadequate, one significant implication of which is that his concept of Reason as the slave of the Passions is likewise inadequate, which, regardless, does not help Kant's rejoinder, which accepts the same concept of the Passions.