The Enlightenment expired as the victim of its own excesses. The more rarefied the religion of the Deists became, the less it offered those who sought solace or salvation. The celebration of abstract reason provoked contrary spirits to begin exploring the world of sensation and emotion in the cultural movement known as Romanticism. The Reign of Terror that followed the French Revolution severely tested the belief that an egalitarian society could govern itself. The high optimism that marked much of Enlightenment thought, however, survived for the next two centuries as one of the movement’s most-enduring legacies: the belief that human history is a record of general progress that will continue into the future. That faith in and commitment to human progress, as well as other Enlightenment values, were questioned beginning in the late 20th century within some currents of European philosophy, particularly postmodernism.