xx.t> x iiNc/miAiNioiYi Ui? MUDERN HISTORIANS 199

All this is both true and well said, and we may observe in parenthesis
that it is as pertinent a critique of the work of professedly antinomian
historians as it is of attempts to discern 'laws of Nature' governing
human affairs. A Chinese antinomian confrere and contemporary of the
Western antinomian historian Herbert Fisher would have labelled his
book, not 'A History of Europe', but 'A History of the Middle Kingdom'.J
Yet a diversity of inscriptions on title-pages, which would thus illustrate
the relativity of antinomian historians' outlooks to their own social
milieux, would also testify, in the same breath, to the uniformity of
antinomian historians' delusions about the workings of their own minds;
for these two diverse titles are, both alike, specifications of patterns in the
affairs of Man in Process of Civilization, and, in thus committing himself
on his title-page to a pattern, whatever the pattern may be, either his-
torian will have 'escaped his own notice' (to enlist an Ancient Greek
turn of phrase) in making a public recantation of his boasted inability to
discern in History any pattern, rhythm, or plot. Nor could our Chinese
or Western historian-sceptic succeed in salvaging his scepticism by de-
scribing his work expressly as being 'A History without a Pattern*; for,
supposing that this vaunted 'patternlessness' could be genuinely con-
ceived of and that the idea could then be successfully put into execution,
the result could be nothing but just one pattern the more. In this light we
can see that Collingwood's act of sceptical faith in taking the shimmer of
relativity in the foreground of historical thought2 at its face value cannot
be the last word; and indeed every sceptic who has the honesty to be
thoroughgoing brings his negations tumbling to the ground by sawing
clean through the branch on which the sceptic-sawyer is perching.

Overrunning the combative philosopher's echelon of advanced posi-
tions in the successive zones of Economics, Politics, and Morals without
lingering, at this stage, to mop them up, let us now press our counter-
offensive home into the zone of the Theory of Knowledge, which is
Scepticism's last ditch where it will decisively stand or fall; and, in con-
ducting this operation, let us take a leaf out of the tactical note-book of
a nameless genius who, according to an amusing legend, once initiated
his mates into the secret of how to win 'hands down' in a contest over
some long since forgotten issue between the employees on the Italian
State Railways and the Ministry of Communications at Rome.

When the leaders of the aggrieved ferromarii were nervously debat-
ing whether they should take the risk of depleting their trade-union
funds, and perhaps even falling foul of the law, by instructing their
followers to strike work, one ingenious mind suggested an alternative
course of action that would be certain to bring the railwaymen's adver-
saries to their knees without putting the workers in the wrong or even
costing them a penny. 'Instead of going on strike', he suggested, 'let us
simply carry out the official regulations'; and this elegant solution of the
railwaymen's problem had only to be propounded in order to be ac-
cepted, nemine contradtcente, as the unquestionably advantageous line

i See the rescript, cited in I. i. 161, which was addressed in A.D. 1793 by the Oecumeni-
cal Emperor Ch'ien Lung to the parochial princeling in partibus barbarids, George III
of Britain. 2 See I. i. 16.