 Returning to conceptual matters, we should ask why the laws of nature are operative on us. Why do they enjoin or prohibit us from performing certain specific actions? Here we come to our third issue, concerning the laws’ force or obligatory status. Traditionally, natural law theorists tended to invoke God for their solution to this very deep mystery. Aquinas, for example, argued that obligation is the result of an action of will by a superior on an inferior (see, e.g., Summa Theologica II.ii.q104). We are obliged to follow civil laws because our political superiors have forced us to do so through actions of their more powerful wills. And we are obliged to follow natural laws because God has forced us to do so through his infinitely more powerful will. Grotius was tempted by this view; he writes in DIB that morally necessary acts must be “understood as necessarily commanded or forbidden by God” (I.1.10.2).