“evil,” “violent,” and “sensual” into one and were the first to use the word “world” as an opprobrium. This inversion of values (which includes using the word “poor” as synonymous with “holy” and “friend”) constitutes the significance of the Jewish people: they mark the beginning of the slave rebellion in morals. 27 In Nietzsche’s theater of two actors, this inversion of values amounted to a victory of “the hopelessly mediocre and insipid man” over the warrior, and thus over Nature—the very transformation, albeit much older, that Max Weber described as the source of that “middle-class life,” of which “it might well be truly said: ‘Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.’ ” What Sombart did was reconcile the two chronologies by providing the missing link: the Judaic ethic produced the modern Jew; the modern Jew summoned the spirit of capitalism. 28 Sombart did not like capitalism (any more than did Weber); Jews excelled under capitalism; so Sombart did not like the Jews (any more than Weber liked the Puritans). Madison C. Peters, a celebrated New York preacher and Protestant theologian, associated the Modern Age with freedom, democracy, prosperity, progress, and clipped fingernails—and liked both the Jews and the Puritans very much. It is true, he argued, that the Puritans were born-again Jews who reverted “to biblical precedents for the regulation of the minutest details of daily life,” but the important thing is that “the Hebrew Commonwealth” had been held up by “our patriotic divines” as a “guide to the American people in their mighty struggle for the blessings of civil and religious liberty.” According to Peters, “it was Jewish money and Jewish encouragement which backed the genius and daring of the Genoese navigator to brave the terrors of the unknown seas,” and it was Jewish energy and Jewish enterprise that helped build “the greatness and the glory, the fame and fortune, the prestige and prosperity of this unapproached and unapproachable land.” And if Jewish rationalism, studiousness, and a sense of chosenness are bad traits, then so are “their thrift and industry, their devotion to high ideals, their love for liberty and fairness between man and man, their unquenchable thirst for knowledge, their unswerving devotion to the principles of their race and the tenets of their faith.” Finally—and not at all trivially—“the Jew is extremely fond of soap and water under all circumstances; especially has he a fondness for the latter. Whenever he gets an opportunity to take a bath he takes one.” All things considered, therefore, the Jews epitomize Western civilization—as its original creators, best practitioners, and rightful beneficiaries.