ABSTRACT
A well-lodged bit of rancor inhabits his brain and dictates to him a quantity of disagreeable judgments about them. In detail and with precision, he pays back all that this century has done to him. The author cannot help perceiving at the root of all his criticism that "resentment" which Nietzsche, in a perhaps dangerous generalization, declares to be the fundamental passion of the Jewish soul. But however unpleasant such an inspiration may be, its value must not be belittled. It puts M. Benda on the track of many a truth that kindness would probably never have taught him. ''Hatred gives one genius," he writes in Belphcgor. The argument used to bolster the desire to equate the real understanding of a feeling with the extension of the feeling itself is this: historically, those who have demonstrated the most profound views on a certain human feeling are the ones who have experienced it, have lived it.
