 The constitutive act of the community cannot simply be a decision by each family to live in proximity to each other and interact peacefully. This would create, at most, a certain familiarity or friendship, but would fail to generate what Suárez terms a “moral union”. This moral union originates instead in the assumption of the duties and obligations that make political life possible. These, in turn, are incurred by an act of “express or tacit pact” between the would-be citizens to help each other, together with their consent to subordinate themselves to a superior (De opere sex dierum, V.7.3, in Suárez, Opera omnia  III).[16]