Such men as Napoleon must always return and always settle our belief in the self-glory of the individual afresh: he himself, however, was corrupted by the means he had to stoop to, and had _lost noblesse_ of character. If he had had to prevail among another kind of men, he could have availed himself of other means; and thus it would not seem _necessary_ that a Cæsar _must become bad._ 1027. Man is a combination of the _beast_ and the _super-beast_; higher man a combination of the monster and the superman:[7] these opposites belong to each other. With every degree of a man's growth towards greatness and loftiness, he also grows downwards into the depths and into the terrible: we should not desire the one without the other;--or, better still: the more fundamentally we desire the one, the more completely we shall achieve the other. [Footnote 7: The play on the German words: "Unthier" and "Überthier," "Unmensch" and "Übermensch," is unfortunately not translatable.--Tr.] 1028. Terribleness belongs to greatness: let us not deceive ourselves. 1029. I have taught the knowledge of such terrible things, that all "Epicurean contentment" is impossible concerning them. Dionysian pleasure is the only _adequate_ kind here: _I was the first to discover the tragic._ Thanks to their superficiality in ethics, the Greeks misunderstood it. Resignation is not the lesson of tragedy, but only the misunderstanding of it! The yearning for nonentity is the _denial_ of tragic wisdom, its opposite! 1030. A rich and powerful soul not only gets over painful and even terrible losses, deprivations, robberies, and insults: it actually leaves such dark infernos in possession of still greater plenitude and power; and, what is most important of all, in possession of an increased blissfulness in love. I believe that he who has divined something of the most fundamental conditions of love, will understand Dante for having written over the door of his Inferno: "I also am the creation of eternal love." 1031. To have travelled over the whole circumference of the modern soul, and to have sat in all its corners--my ambition, my torment, and my happiness. Veritably to have _overcome_ pessimism, and, as the result thereof, to have acquired the eyes of a Goethe--full of love and goodwill. 1032. The first question is by no means whether we are satisfied with ourselves; but whether we are satisfied with anything at all. Granting that we should say yea to any single moment, we have then affirmed not only ourselves, but the whole of existence. For nothing stands by itself, either in us or in other things: and if our soul has vibrated and rung with happiness, like a chord, once only and only once, then all eternity was necessary in order to bring about that one event,--and all eternity, in this single moment of our affirmation, was called good, was saved, justified, and blessed. 1033.