From L.B Namier’s essay History in Fritz Stern’s The Varieties of History:
A dilettante is one who takes himself more seriously than his work; and doctrinaires enamoured of their theories or ingenious ideas are dilettanti in public affairs. On the contrary, the historical approach is intellectually humble; the aim is to comprehend situations, to study trends, to discover how things work: and the crowning attainment of historical study is a historical sense – an intuitive understanding of how things do not happen.
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