Highly honoured Sir!

Will you allow a total stranger—a disciple of your science & one who honours your services to cultivated humanity—to send you a paper which has just been published—“Herder as a Precursor of Darwin, & of the modern Philosophy of Natural History—” with a request that you will accept it as a small mark of the unbounded admiration & esteem of the writer?¹ The contents of the work is a close condensation of my notes on Herder’s relation to modern science—a study to which I have devoted myself for years with untiring zeal, & true love for the work. I need hardly say that I began with a study of the most important works of modern research, especially yours and Hæckels,² and also a thorough study of the works of Herder on the Philosophy of natural History. I cannot judge whether I have succeeded in the task which I proposed to myself in the above named paper. I should therefore be grateful for any correction or any blame where you consider that I have said too much or too little, owing to my not yet thoroughly cultivated individuality (!!!)³ But my hope rather is that you, dear Sir, to whom this paper is really addressed, will pronounce a judgment both kind and just upon its conclusions, & thereby as the most able of all judges in this question, decide the victory of the good cause. In this hope I place in your hands this work (which of course only pretends to be an “avis aux savants,”⁴—a very small contribution to the giant building of your science) full of confidence & with the request for a lenient opinion, which, whether it be one of praise or blame, can only do me honour and give me pleasure. Do not therefore pass over without notice this “contribution to many contributions of the century”,⁵ but do you yourself, if you think it right, give to the almost forgotten [admirer] the honourable name of your intellectual precursor— the Prophet of your Theory! I know and value your conscientiousness in acknowledging all merit—, you will again display it in the cause of one of the greatest men of Germany.

It is in this belief that I look forward to your decision with confidence, & remain with unbounded admiration & heartfelt respect. Yrs | Friedrich von Bärenbach