Page:A philosophical essay on probabilities Tr. Truscott, Emory 1902.djvu/180

Liebnitz, always led by a singular and very loose metaphysics, considered that the series plus one, minus one, plus one, etc., becomes unity or zero according as one stops at a number of terms odd or even; and as in infinity there is no reason to prefer the even number to the odd, one ought following the rules of probability, to take the half of the results relative to these two kinds of numbers, and which are zero and unity, which gives 1/2 for the value of the series. Daniel Bernoulli has since extended this reasoning to the summation of series formed from periodic terms. But all these series have no values properly speaking; they get them only in the case where their terms are multiplied by the successive powers of a variable less than unity. Then these series are always convergent, however small one supposes the difference of the variable from unity; and it is easy to demonstrate that the values assigned by Bernoulli, by virtue of the rule of probabilities, are the same values of the generative fraction of the series, when one supposes in these fractions the variable equal to unity. These values are again the limits which the series approach more and more, in proportion as the variable approaches unity. But when the variable is exactly equal to unity the series cease to be convergent; they have values only as far as one arrests them. The remarkable ratio of this application of the calculus of probabilities with the limits of the values of periodic series supposes that the terms of these series are multiplied by all the consecutive powers of the variable. But this series may result from the development of an infinity of different fractions in which this did not occur. Thus the series plus one, minus one, plus one, etc.,