Here a friend pats you on the shoulder: "Quite right; be neither an emigrant nor a waster; but be practical; have no illusions; deal with possibilities--who can say what is in the future?
We must face these facts." Our confident friend lacks a sense of humour.

He would put your plan by for its bearing on the future, but he proposes one himself that the future must justify.

He tells you circumstances will not be in your favour: he assumes them in his own.

But we only claim that our principles will rule the future as they have ruled the past; for the circumstances no man can speak.

He calls you a dreamer for your principles, but he can't show, now nor in history, that his exemplars were ever justified.