In 1798, the German cleric Friedrich Schleiermacher gave in to the urgings of a circle of prominent friends—every one contemptuous of religion—and began to write. Eight months later, he completed the manuscript of On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, his compelling attempt to reconcile the human religious intuition with the rationality so prized by the philosophers of the Enlightenment (and by his skeptical friends).