Craig Nelson writes that Paine and almost all of his Enlightenment colleagues spent their last years "believing that their revolutionary programs had failed, that the philosophy of the light had been proved a pipe dream...". Nevertheless, he adds, today, nearly half of the world's nations have democratic elections and the freedoms which Paine's revolutionary generation hoped to achieve. "Of Paine's many reasons for daring to publish work for which he could have been hanged or guillotined in the United Colonies, the United Kingdom, or France, this legacy is his glory."