The aim of this book is to offer an introduction to the culture of the West in the personal terms of those who stand out in the history of the West, considering that is it persons rather than events or forces, poets, philosophers and artists rather than rulers, that make history. Here the persons are presented in pairs, in historical order: Homer and Virgil, Plato and Aristotle, Peter and Paul, Augustine and Benedict, Francis and Thomas, Dante and Shakespeare, Leonardo and Michelangelo, Erasmus and Luther, Galileo and Descartes, Locke and Rousseau, Newman and Darwin. Above them all and behind them all stand the persons of Jesus for the Christian religion and Socrates for Greek philosophy.