NONFICTION - May 8, 1994

THE FOURTH INSTINCT: The Call of the Soul by Arianna Huffington (Simon & Schuster: $22; 269 pp.) The first instinct in Arianna Huffington’s thoughtfully conceived worldview is the instinct to grow--its instrument is the senses; the second instinct is the need for self expression, the instrument is dialect; the third instinct is the sexual drive, its instrument is intuition; and the fourth instinct is love of others and the search for meaning outside oneself--its instrument is knowledge and the ability to identify with another.

Much of this book, based on Huffington’s own experiences (which range wildly from birth and childhood in Greece, to a rather fancy British education, to the dining rooms of New York society, to Washington), is dedicated to examples of places where the fourth instinct makes itself heard, as well as those parts of a modern life from which it is conspicuously absent. American culture in general looks perilously thin as far as the fourth instinct is concerned; the rubble heaps of science, religion, art, death and community are all picked over for shards of the fourth instinct. Hopeful phrases like “under the reign of the fourth instinct,” and “in the next millennium” are meant to make us feel that civilization can and is evolving to a point that honors and nurtures our ability to love and have compassion for others. But as a concept, laid out in this way, the fourth instinct remains strangely unexplained and unintegrated, kind of like God.