Goethe: Hypsistarian Morphologist

In a letter dated March 22, 1831, Goethe confided to Sulpiz Boisserée:

"...I have found no confession of faith to which I could ally myself without reservation. Now in my old age, however, I have learned of a sect, the Hypsistarians, who, hemmed in between heathens, Jews and Christians, declared that they would treasure, admire, and honour the best, the most perfect that might come to their knowledge, and inasmuch as it must have a close connection to the Godhead, pay it reverence. A joyous light thus beamed at me suddenly out of a dark age, for I had the feeling that all my life I had been aspiring to qualify as a Hypsistarian. That, however, is no small task, for how does one, in the limitations of one's individuality, come to know what is most excellent?" Peter Boerner, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1832/1982: A Biographical Essay, Bonn: Inter Nationes (1981), 82.