Thinkers like Mr. Leslie Stephen say that such beliefs as these belong to dreamland; and they are welcome if they please to keep their names.  Their terminology at least has this merit, that it recognises the dualism of the two orders of things it deals with.  Let them keep their names if they will; and in their language the case amounts to this—­that it is only for the sake of the dreams that visit it that the world of reality has any certain value for us.  Will not the dreams continue, when the reality has passed away?

G.P.  PUTNAM’S SONS have in preparation a series of volumes, to be issued under the title of

CURRENT DISCUSSION,

A COLLECTION FROM THE CHIEF ENGLISH ESSAYS ON QUESTIONS
OF THE TIME.

The series will be edited by Edward L. Burlingame, and is designed to bring together, for the convenience of readers and for a lasting place in the library, those important and representative papers from recent English periodicals, which may fairly be said to form the best history of the thought and investigation of the last few years.  It is characteristic of recent thought and science, that a much larger proportion than ever before of their most important work has appeared in the form of contributions to reviews and magazines; the thinkers of the day submitting their results at once to the great public, which is easiest reached in this way, and holding their discussions before a large audience, rather than in the old form of monographs reaching the special student only.  As a consequence there are subjects of the deepest present and permanent interest, almost all of whose literature exists only in the shape of detached papers, individually so famous that their topics and opinions are in everybody’s mouth—­yet collectively only accessible, for re-reading and comparison, to those who have carefully preserved them, or who are painstaking enough to study long files of periodicals.

In so collecting these separate papers as to give the reader a fair if not complete view of the discussions in which they form a part; to make them convenient for reference in the future progress of those discussions; and especially to enable them to be preserved as an important part of the history of modern thought,—­it is believed that this series will do a service that will be widely appreciated.

Such papers naturally include three classes:—­those which by their originality have recently led discussion into altogether new channels; those which have attracted deserved attention as powerful special pleas upon one side or the other in great current questions; and finally, purely critical and analytical dissertations.  The series will aim to include the best representatives of each of these classes of expression.

It is designed to arrange the essays included in the Series under such general divisions as the following, to each of which one or more volumes will be devoted:—­