"Namier's choice of a second subject was equally significant. Namier by-passed the great modern revolutions, English, French and Russian...and elected to give us a penetrating study of the European revolutions of 1848 – a revolution that failed, a set-back all over Europe for the rising hopes of liberalism, a demonstration of the hollowness of ideas in face of armed force, of democrats when confronted with soldiers. The intrusion of ideas into the serious business of politics is futile and dangerous: Namier rubbed in the moral by calling this humiliating failure "the revolution of the intellectuals". Nor is our conclusion a matter of inference alone; for, though Namier wrote nothing systematic on the philosophy of history, he expressed himself in an essay published a few years ago with his usual clarity and incisiveness. "The less, therefore," he wrote, "man clogs the free play of his mind with political doctrine and dogma, the better for his thinking.""