Mably and Morelly had their disciples in Babeuf and the socialists.
A naive confidence that the political upheaval meant regeneration and inaugurated a reign of justice and happiness pervaded France in the first period of the Revolution, and found a striking expression in the ceremonies of the universal "Federation" in the Champ-de-Mars on 14th July 1790.

The festival was theatrical enough, decreed and arranged by the Constituent Assembly, but the enthusiasm and optimism of the people who gathered to swear loyalty to the new Constitution were genuine and spontaneous.

Consciously or subconsciously they were under the influence of the doctrine of Progress which leaders of opinion had for several decades been insinuating into the public mind.

It did not occur to them that their oaths and fraternal embraces did not change their minds or hearts, and that, as Taine remarked, they remained what ages of political subjection and one age of political literature had made them.
The assumption that new social machinery could alter human nature and create a heaven upon earth was to be swiftly and terribly confuted.
Post uarios casus et tot discrimina rerum uenimus in Latium, but Latium was to be the scene of sanguinary struggles.
Another allied and fundamental fallacy, into which all the philosophers and Rousseau had more or less fallen, was reflected and exposed by the Revolution.

They had considered man in vacuo.