Thus the probabilities are delicately balanced.
A volume entitled Opera posthuma (Leiden, 1703) contained his "Dioptrica," in which the ratio between the respective focal lengths of object-glass and eye-glass is given as the measure of magnifying power, together with the shorter essays De vitris figurandis, De corona et parheliis, &c. An early tract De ratiociniis tin ludo aleae, printed in 16J7 with Schooten's Exercitationes mathematicae, is notable as one of the first formal treatises on the theory of probabilities; nor should his investigations of the properties of the cissoid, logarithmic and catenary curves be left unnoticed.
The assumption may be a reasonable one, and if the results agree with probabilities as deduced from the rest of the evidence it is wise to adopt it; if on the other hand the other evidence seems in any serious degree contrary to those results it may be surmised that the assumption is faulty in some particular.
After all, it is only a question of probabilities, and the difficulties of fitting a wife and child into the story seem to be very great, whether we conceive them left behind by Demetrius in Italy, or sent out of the country before him.
These new probabilities open up considerable possibilities in research with regard to the relations of the early Minoans and other Aegeans with Syria and Egypt and the undoubted fact of the resemblances of Minoan on the one hand to Syrian and Egyptian religions and funerary practices, and on the other hand to those of the Etruscans.
