As Voltaire remarked about the same time, France was becoming Encyclopaedist, and Europe too.
2.
The influence of the subversive and rationalistic thinkers in bringing about the events of 1789 has been variously estimated by historians.
The truth probably lies in the succinct statement of Acton that "the confluence of French theory with American example caused the Revolution to break out" when it did.

The theorists aimed at reform, not at political revolution; and it was the stimulus of the Declaration of Rights of 1774 and the subsequent victory of the Colonies that precipitated the convulsion, at a time when the country had a better prospect of improvement than it ever had before 1774, when Louis XVI.
came to the throne.

But the theories had prepared France for radical changes, and they guided the phases of the Revolution.

The leaders had all the optimism of the Encyclopaedists; yet the most powerful single force was Rousseau, who, though he denied Progress and blasphemed civilisation, had promulgated the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, giving it an attractive appearance of mathematical precision; and to this doctrine the revolutionaries attached their optimistic hopes.

[Footnote: It is interesting to observe how Robespierre, to whom the doctrines of Rousseau were oracles, could break out into admiration of the progress of civilised man, as he did in the opening passage of his speech of 7th May 1794.