Socrates when the cleavage between the classes had more or less disappearedk—Socrates himself doing much to fix and popularize them. They were, so to speak, the spiritual legacy of the old-time ruling class. So much then for "good and bad (schlecht)" the dominant valuations, as Nietzsche thinks, in the Greco-Roman world.
IV
And now as to the other type of morality, whose antithesis is "good and evil (böse)." Save to the extent to which it shades off into group-morality in general, it may be doubted whether it domesticated itself in the ancient world. It is the morality of the mass, and the mass had not sufficient power to impress their views upon language—perhaps were not "class-conscious" enough (to use a modern phrase), or with enough general intellectual development to perceive that they had a good and evil of their own; at best there was a tendency, an instinct, a craving in that direction.l This in general; but there was an exception. In the case of one remarkable people of antiquity the mass or slave morality did articulate itself—and that owing to a peculiar combination of circumstances: I refer to the Jews. The early morality of Israel was much like that of other primitive vigorous peoples; but after the rise of the prophets,m and particularly after the national downfall, there was a change. It was one of the main characteristics of the prophets that they took the side of the people, the common man, against the excesses of those who ruled. Under their influence the instinctive valuations of the weaker and poorer class attained an extraordinary development, and at last came to constitute the dominant morality of the community. Particularly when the community came under foreign dominion, when Israel became an oppressed and suffering people, did the point of view of the weaker class become that of the nation as a whole. The poor, the weak, the suffering, became almost ipso facto the righteous and the good;n kindness, mutual help, mercy, and pity were made an absolute ideal—the law of Jahweh himself. We have heard much in recent years of the transformation of the ancient religion of Israel into an ethical religion—this is its meaning. Jahweh is no longer simply an impersonation of the nation's
