This paper deals with Gottried Semper's search toward the "beginnings(Anfange)" of architecture in his theoretical development of the 1840s. In his 1843 letter to the Braunschweig publisher E. Vieweg, he proposed a comprehensive theoretical work based on his lectures. A book contract was drawn up in 1844. In Semper's 1843 letter, it seems he used the concept of "original models (ursprungliche Gebilde)" in almost the same unhistorical way as Goethe. But by around the end of the 1840s he had come to search toward the "beginnings" of architecture in histories of various nations, to grasp at the "original models" as concrete, that is, historically existing beings. In this way he set up his "historical method" to describe "The Four Elements of Architecture".