Herder initially developed this method in the 1760s mainly in relation to poetry and language. His unpublished Attempt at a History of Lyrical Poetry (1764) contains his earliest presentation of the method and applies it to poetry. His slightly later published work, the Fragments (1767–8), refines his presentation of it and applies it to language. He then goes on to apply the method to moral (and other) values. Thus in This Too a Philosophy of History (1774) he largely focuses on moral, aestheti