It was in my “Genealogy of Morals” that I first gave a psychological exposition of the idea of the antithesis noble and _resentment-morality,_ the latter having arisen out of an attitude of negation to the former: but this is Judæo-Christian morality heart and soul. In order to be able to say Nay to everything that represents the ascending movement of life, prosperity, power, beauty, and self-affirmation on earth, the instinct of resentment, become genius, bad to invent _another_ world, from the standpoint of which that _Yea-saying_ to life appeared as _the_ most evil and most abominable thing. From the psychological standpoint the Jewish people are possessed of the toughest vitality. Transplanted amid impossible conditions, with profound self-preservative intelligence, it voluntarily took the side of all the instincts of decadence,—_not_ as though dominated by them, but because it detected a power in them by means of which it could assert itself _against_ “the world.” The Jews are the opposite of all _decadents_: they have been forced to represent them to the point of illusion, and with a _non plus ultra_ of histrionic genius, they have known how to set themselves at the head of all decadent movements (St Paul and Christianity for instance), in order to create something from them which is stronger than every party _saying Yea to life._ For the category of men which aspires to power in Judaism and Christianity,—that is to say, for the sacerdotal class, decadence is but a _means;_ this category of men has a vital interest in making men sick, and in turning the notions “good” and “bad,” “true” and “false,” upside down in a manner which is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it. 25