case. He felt lonely because his wife had abandoned him for another man. So, the scientist quite interestingly expressed his mental state, associating it with the life of stars. The main thing was that he did have an understanding, though in a peculiar veiled form, that loneliness was actually an illusion of one’s mind, its fiction, for objectively a person was always socially surrounded. Thus, the feeling of loneliness appears mostly because of one’s inability to adapt oneself to society. The astronomer used to interpret his thoughts in the language of his profession. As he said, if we look at a star, it seems to be a lonely object. Yet, indeed, it’s only an illusion of our naked eye, for even modern telescopes distinguish three to five hundred stars in one such star.”
“Oh, there are even more interesting things than this!” Eugene waved his hand, demonstrating good knowledge of the subject. “If you take a modern microscope and examine this one…” his forefinger pointed at father, but then his eyes timely came across with the priest’s eloquent stare which made Eugene sharply change the direction of his finger to the opposite side where Stas was sitting. “…this suspicious individual, you’ll find so many stuff there!.. A whole Universe of diverse community of fleas, microbes and various disgusting parasites.”
“It’s you who are a disgusting parasite!” Stas countered with a smile. “It can be seen even with a naked eye…”
The entire company burst out laughing. Once the revelry abated, Nikolai Andreevich continued, “Well, this only proves the fact that stars and people are creatures resembling one another in many ways. Everything’s like in our life. Stars like people “live” in groups – in accumulations in which they are connected between each other by forces of mutual gravitation. And the most interesting thing is that, just like in human society, stars most often make up binary systems…”
“What systems?” Victor asked.
“Double systems,” Sensei explained. “It’s like two suns rotating around a common center of masses.”
“Yes,” Nikolai Andreevich confirmed. “That astronomer told such systems are very stable… And, in addition to double ones, there are also three-, four, fivefold stars. To tell the truth, these are rarer than double ones. And he surely paid particular attention to the threefold stars phenomenon, comparing it to his own situation. It turns out that triple stars cannot coexist stably. You know why? Two stars simply discard the third body, while they themselves may steadily rotate side by side during a long period of time.”
“It’s a natural law of mechanics,” Sensei uttered, shrugging his shoulders. “The third body disturbs movement of the other two and usually leads to such system decay.”
“Amazing laws which in many respects coincide with human society!” Nikolai Andreevich said.
“It depends on how you look at that society,” Svat chimed in with a chuckle. “Especially, at a trio. If a trio includes a woman, it’s a delicate issue, I agree. But, if it’s a male company, they can occasionally form systems so stable, especially in drinking, that their mutual gravitation is truly marvelous. And the main thing is that there mostly gather not four or five of them, but exactly three, not more and not less.”
“This way, it is easier to think. A certain integrity of mind is generated,” Bogdan remarked with a grin.
“It’s correct,” Oleg confirmed and specified. “Four is already an excess, one is excessive.”
“The most interesting thing is that it’s just the same up there,” Nikolai Andreevich pointed at the sky, laughing with all the rest. “Fourfold, fivefold stars make insecure groups which dissociate much faster. Surely, same laws of nature operate there. Such cohabitations of stars may form and decay many times throughout their existence. And, as my patient explained, a star may constantly change its partners. For example, in compact star accumulations a star may fly from one “company” to another as many as six times during its lifetime…”
Eugene archly glanced at Father John.
“Father, it’s a heavenly adultery. How does the church tolerate this?”
Father John made a “clever” face, looked at the stars and declared in priestly voice, “It’s all God’s will, child.”
It made everyone laugh again.
“It’s probably true,” Nikolai Andreevich nodded merrily and addressed Sensei again. “In general, I had not a patient, but rather a whole well of psychological arguments for our depression clients. He infected me with his comparative analysis so much that, after our conversations, I became interested in his science myself. He even brought me books on amusing astronomy.”
Sensei grinned and asked in jest, “I haven’t quite understood who was the patient out of you two?”
“Well, sometimes such cases may take place in medicine,” the psychotherapist supported his humor with laughter. “You know, at times some doctors say: “Sometimes you come across such a “talented” loony who can bring you into his own condition without you batting an eyelid”.”
The group burst out laughing again.
“Yet, can you imagine what I’ve read in those books?!” Nikolai Andreevich continued, enthusiastically sharing his impressions. “It appears that in complex star systems consisting of a hundred, two hundred, a thousand stars the situation with their interaction is completely different from that in simple accumulations. A star cannot feel each of its neighbors anymore. Instead, it feels the overall field, and so it moves evenly enough. It looks as if the influence of the neighbors is smoothed out.”
“Such stable groups may often be found in galaxies,” Sensei remarked as if it went without saying.
“Exactly! I’ve noticed this, too. Everything is like in human society. Mass psychology on stream! A mass grades a person’s individuality, i.e. it equalizes completely different people in many respects and imparts new qualities to people belonging to it. Let’s take Le Bon’s concept, for instance. What are the main distinctive features of an individual inside a mass? Firstly, it’s anonymity, disappearance of the conscious personality. Secondly, it’s predominance of the unconscious personality, deterioration of intellect and rationalism. Thirdly, it’s orientation of the mass’s thoughts and feelings into one and the same direction. And the main thing is formation of an aim in individuals to immediately implement the ideas they’re being inspired with. We may say, it’s almost like in star systems.
“However, there are also other amazing facts. I became interested to discover specific figures, i.e. the number of stars in such complex accumulations, for in the human society, and even in the animal world we view something similar. Biologists conducted quite interesting studies on mass psychology with comparative analysis of animal behavior. Processing various data, scientists discovered an optimal size of a human group – not more than one hundred fifty people. Moreover, this number may be applied to various communities, starting from a tribe of hunters or collectors, right up to church, military, corporate groups. And it all began with biologists’ observation of baboons and chimpanzees behavior, when they determined a positive correlation between the size of a cortex, namely of its frontal and temporal parts, and the size of an animal pack…”
“What is correlation?” Victor interested, not really understanding Nikolai Andreevich’s professional language.
“Well, it’s interrelation, interdependency… So, they were observing apes during those experiments. The apes were living in groups consisting of about fifty specimens each. All pack members knew each other. Furthermore, they were even involved in various types of relationships: they were friends or at odds with one another, they entered into diverse
