The German theologian and philosopher Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher (1768-1834) held that man's consciousness of being springs from the presence of God within him. He believed that all morality is an attempt to unite man's physical nature with his mind.

Born on Nov. 21, 1768, Friedrich Schleiermacher was educated at Moravian Church schools and destined to be a pastor. Doubting religion, he studied at the University of Halle, becoming absorbed first in Kantian philosophy and then in Plato, Baruch Spinoza, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He became one of the early Berlin romantics and associated particularly with Friedrich von Schlegel. In 1799 he published his famous Reden über die Religion, in which he claimed that religion was separate and apart from morality and knowledge. His Monologen (1800) outlined his ethical system. His Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (1803) was a philosophical work, and his Die Weihnachtsfeier (1806) outlined his views on Jesus. He...