 So described, natural law might be nothing more than an innate inclination to accept a fixed set of moral laws prescribed by God. In fact, however, Aquinas’s theory offers something more complex and nuanced, because he thinks the moral law arises not out of brutely innate inclination but out of rational reflection on the good (Finnis 1998 ch. 3; Rhonheimer 1987 [2000]). Mirroring the way he develops theoretical science out of first principles (§6.3), he thinks moral reasoning also rises out of self-evident first principles, the grasp of which is the defining task of the intellect’s power of synderesis (ST 1a 79.12). The most fundamental such precept is this: