The next important feature to be studied in order to appreciate the character and life of Forrest is his experience of the prizes and the penalties of fame. For he had a great fame; and fame, particularly in a democratic country, inflicts penalties as well as bestows prizes. Not one man in a thousand has enough force and tenacity of character to determine to gain the solid and lasting prizes of life. Average men willingly put up with cheap and transient substitutes for the real ends, or with deluding mockeries of them. They seek passing pleasures instead of the conditions of permanent happiness; applause instead of merit; a crowd of acquaintances instead of true friends; notoriety or stagnant indifference instead of fame. There is nothing more worthy of contempt, although it is so miserably common, than the mean and whining cant which puts negation and failure above affirmation and success, constantly asserting the emptiness and deceit of all earthly goods. In opposition to this morbid depreciation of every natural attractiveness without and desire within, nothing is more wholesome or grand than a positive grasp and fruition of all the native worths of the world. A great deal of the fashionable disparagement and scorn of the prizes of wealth, position, reputation, is but unconscious envy decrying what it lacks the strength and courage to seize. The fame which a gifted and faithful man secures is the reflex signal of the effects he has produced, and a broad, vivid, healthy enjoyment of it is an intrinsic social good to be desired. It is one of the greatest forces employed by Providence for the education of men and the advancement of society. To condemn or despise it is to fling in the face of God. The fancied pious who do this are dupes of an impious error. Fame is a life in the souls of other men added to our own. It is a feeling of the effect we have taken on the admiration and love of those who regard us with honoring attention and sympathy. It is a social atmosphere of respect and praise and curiosity, enveloping its subject, fostering his self-esteem, keeping his soul in a moral climate of complacency. The famous man has a secret feeling that the contributors to his glory are his friends, loyal to him, ready to protect, further, and bless him. Thus he is fortified and enriched by them, their powers ideally appropriated to his ideal use. Thus fame is the multiplication of the life of its subject, reflected in the lives of its givers. This is the real cause of the powerful fascination of fame for its votaries; for there is no instinct deeper in man than the instinct which leads him to desire to intensify, enlarge, and prolong his existence; and fame makes a man feel that in some sense his existence is multiplied and continued in all those who think of him admiringly, and that it will last as long as their successive generations endure. As Conrad makes Jack Cade say,—