Noble Sir,

Honored Herr Professor,

I am taking advantage of the opportunity I have of sending you my [Inaugural] Dissertation by way of the respondent of that work, a capable Jewish student of mine. At the same time, I should like to destroy an unpleasant misunderstanding caused by my protracted delay in answering your valued letter. The reason was none other than the striking importance of what I gleaned from that letter, and this occasioned the long postponement of a suitable answer. Since I had spent much time investigating the science on which you focused your attention there, for I was attempting to discover the nature and if possible the manifest and immutable laws of that science, it could not have pleased me more that a man of such discriminating acuteness and universality of insight, with whose method of thinking I had often been in agreement, should offer his services for a joint project of tests and investigations, to map the secure construction of this science. I could not persuade myself to send you anything less than a clear summary of how I view this science and a definite idea of the proper method for it. The carrying out of this intention entangled me in investigations that were new to me and, what with my exhausting academic work, necessitated one postponement after another.