intelligently we can go about the task of changing them. If it happens that the country is involved in a war for the survival of of democratic faith, we may go to the country with the demand for an expression of its sincerity in respect to its professed principles. We rely on other laws when we do so, but it is we who give them an opportunity to come into operation by the changes in the physical, psychological, and social scene produced by our activities.
We might discover, if our efforts are well organized and if our political campaign is tied into a genuine educational crusade for democracy, that the law “no Catholic or Jew can be President of the United States” holds no more than the “law” which previously had been regarded as just as valid, viz. “no President can be elected to more than two terms of office.” We have not abolished the law, but as a result of our action in changing the conditions we have rendered it nugatory. The extent to which our intervention in the present will affect the future outcome, when this is projected as a simple induction from the past, is a matter of degree. In some affairs the future may be accurately predicted with little concern over what we can do about it. In other affairs what we do or leave undone may have more determining significance than any other known factor.
2. Consider another rather different situation. Suppose we were trying to foretell who the next Pope of the Catholic Church will be. We would have to take note of at least the following “laws:” (a) “No Protestant or Jew could be Pope.” (b) “No Catholic woman could be Pope.” (c) “Whoever the Pope was, he would be an Italian Cardinal.” None of these laws is certain, but the first is more binding on our prediction than the second, the second more than the third. By this we mean that the chances of electing a non-Italian Catholic man as Pope would be much better than the chances of electing a Catholic woman, and as small as the chances of doing the latter, they would be better than the chances of electing a Protestant or Jew. The reasons are obvious. For the first law to be violated or to cease operating would practically require the entire transformation of the nature of the Church organization and the abandonment of basic theological doctrines. This would be tantamount to virtual dissolution of the Church. At the present time this organization is growing in power. The pressures against which it had to contend in the past are diminishing in intensity, while its own influence on public affairs is growing. Further, without hostile
