How do historians gain historical knowledge? It is assumed in every historical narrative that form always follows content. What this means is that the historical narrative must always be transparent in referring to what actually happened according to the evidence. As Voltaire said, and most conventionally trained historians might still agree, 'too many metaphors are hurtful...to truth, by saying more or less than the thing itself' (quoted in White 1973: 53). To get at the thing itself, objectivity is the aim and this demands the referential language of historians. With this aim and this tool we can infer the realities beneath the misleading world of appearances. To the Western modernist Enlightenment-inspired mind objectivity and the historical narrative must remain compatible.