Anamnesis - Tadeusz Wielecki

After consulting with experts in the field, I have an idea what Breadth, Length, Height, and Depth are.

These qualities belong to geometry. And geometry, says Plato, makes more easy the vision of the idea of good. 

        And thither, as I was saying, all things tend which compel the soul to turn her gaze towards that place, where is the full perfection of being, which she ought, by all means, to behold. 

Geometry forces us to look at being. Which according to Plato, as so aptly put by Tatarkiewicz, “is only what has in its nature to be, and thus cannot stop being.” us geometric cognition regards what exists eternally. 

        Then, my noble friend, geometry will draw the soul towards truth. Since after geometry, which is the examination of a plane surface, one needs to move on to examining the dimension of depth, or the volume of solids, and eventually, to solids in motion, or astronomy. 

        Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

        Then, my noble friend, geometry will draw the soul towards truth, and create the spirit of philosophy, and raise up that which is now unhappily allowed to fall down. 

But eventually, it is not a thing to be grasped by the mind. 

        There is not, and never will be, any composition of mine about things I am occupied with. For a matter of that kind cannot be expressed by words, like other things to be learnt; but by a long intercourse with the subject and living with it a light is kindled on a sudden, as if from a leaping fire. ... They, who are not naturally close to, and allied with, what is just, and the other things that are beautiful ... will never learn, as far as it possible, the truth relating to virtue and vice. 

“...I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth...,” writes St Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. 

Tadeusz Wielecki