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Hello in Plato's symposium Aristophanes tells a story about love. He says that once near the beginning of time there were three types of human, one male, one female, and one that was part man and part woman.

Each human type had four hands and four feet and one head with two faces.

And what they lacked in beauty, they made up for in power and bravery they even dared to attack

the gods.

Its use as usual lust is patience and resolve to split these creatures in heart to

diminish their strength and increase their numbers. His plan was that there

be more people to offer sacrifices but they'd be too weak to challenge the

gods. However, with the split he inadvertently created us,

lonely creatures, forever searching for our other halves. Aristophanes explained to

Socrates, human nature was originally one and we were a whole and the desire and pursuit of the whole

is what we call love.

That's one version of love, it still seems to have strange echoes in the culture of today.

But how has the Western understanding

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