234 LAW AND FREEDOM IN HISTORY

consists in (i) fitting a "mathematical curve" (for example, a straight line
or a third-degree parabola) to the data, or to the logarithms of the data, by
the method of least squares or of moments; (2) computing moving or pro-
gressive arithmetic means or moving medians, including in the averages
whatever number of items seems to give satisfactory results; (3) first com-
puting moving averages and.then fitting trend lines to the results; (4)
drawing a free-hand curve through the data representing the investigator's
impression, formed from careful study, of the long-time tendency; or (5)
using ratios between the paired items of series which are believed to have
substantially the same secular trends.>J

The pioneers of a Western economic science had the courage of their
convictions, and they were justified in their faith that economic history
must make sense by the validity and the value of the intellectual results
that they achieved by staking their intellectual fortunes on the rationality
of their hypothesis and pushing their interrogations of the data to the
third degree.

(c) 'LAWS OF NATURE' IN THE HISTORIES OF CIVILIZATIONS

i. Struggles for Existence between Parochial States
The War-and-Peace Cycle in Modern and post-Modern Western History

If, without taking our eyes off the Modern and post-Modern chapters
of the history of the Western Civilization, we now focus them on the
political, instead of the economic, plane of activity, we shall sec that, in
an epoch in which the outstanding economic phenomenon was the
epiphany and dissemination of Industrialism, the outstanding political
phenomenon was the earlier epiphany of a Balance of Power between
parochial states and the progressive inclusion of an ever widening circle
of states within the field offeree governed by this unitary system of inter-
state power politics.

The Modern Western political Balance of Power resembled its
younger contemporary the Modern Western industrial economy not
only in tending to expand progressively over an ever wider geographical
area, but also in exhibiting a cyclic rhythm in its history, Alternating
phases of war and peace were the political counterparts of alternating
phases of economic prosperity and depression; and a confrontation of
the political with the economic series of fluctuations in Modem Western
history threw fresh light on those cycles with wave-lengths of about
twenty-five years, and double cycles with wave-lengths of about half
a century, for which the economic evidence waa so inadequate that the
more cautious economic investigators had returned verdicts of 'non-

uLOUSHVQ , ni. j. j,j.<3 .rviituytua ux A ğruc scries , 3. A nc j. JTUPICIU cu ocuuttir AJTCIJIWB,
(i) 'The Empirical Approach to the Problem'. Schumpetcr (Business Cycles^ vol. i,
pp. 200-5). declares himself sceptical of 'fitted trends' except in so far as these follow a
lead given by an empirical investigation of the historical facts. 'Trend analysis by means
both of smoothing and of fitting may, from additional theoretical and historical informa-
tion, derive a right of existence not naturally or generally its own* (p, 203). 'Such trends
fas autonomous changes in taste, such as occurred with respect to alcoholic drinks or
heavy foods] can in no ease be found by formal methods' (p. 305).