The disaster which aroused Nehemiah's grief was scarcely the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., but a more recent one, and it has been conjectured that it followed the work of Ezra (in b above).
To a man who regarded the art of writing, of which at the best he had but a slight knowledge, as something supernatural, and who lived amongst illiterate people, an A B C may well have seemed more of the sacred book.
When A, B and C are objects of sense, their relative positions are matters, not of inference, but of observation; when they are not, there is an inference, but a syllogistic inference with a major premise, induced from previous observations, " whenever of three things the first is to the right of the second, and the second to the right of the third, the first is to the right of the third."
In the present article a+b will mean that a is taken first, and b added to it; but a X b will mean that b is taken first, and is then multiplied by a.
Not the slightest change in the direction of such a star when in this position has ever been detected, and it is certain that if any occurs it can be but a minute fraction of a second of arc. As an atmosphere equal to ours in density would produce a deviation of an important fraction of a degree, it may be said that the moon can have no atmosphere exceeding in density the b b l o o that of the earth.
