Our own circumstances may be in critical respects different, especially since our age does tend toward an aggressive relativism. It is as a reminder of enduring standards, and indeed of the nature of man, that the Declaration of Independence, with its affirmation of the right of revolution, remains our founding instrument. We have been considering, by and large, the approach taken by the ancients to these matters. Still, the law, in its broadest sense, very much affects what even we regard as virtuous. Consider again the example of whom or how one may mourn or the example of how parents are to be treated, matters that we seem to prefer to leave to everyone to decide as he sees fit.
Customs can be decisive here.
Such customs are a sort of law. After all, the unwritten law, as an expression of the community will, was a vital, perhaps even the major, part of the law among the ancients. In the broadest sense, then, the rules discovered and set forth in the Ethics are laws, at least to the extent that community opinion adopts and insists upon them. Some necessary sanctions, as well as systematic programs for habituation and supervision, do depend on statutes and decrees for their full effectiveness. For us, as for Aristotle, the laws most broadly conceived very much define what is virtuous or vicious.