NEW BOOKS

Good Deeds Are Instinctual, Psychologist Says

By C. QUINN HANCHETTE

Ordinary Grace
By Kathleen A. Brehony

A poor man living on a Postal Service pension in Richmond, Va., has given away $81,000 since 1972 to 81 strangers who he thought deserved a $1,000 gift.

A bank teller in Napa, Cal., donated a kidney to a customer she barely knew and saved the woman's life.

The author of this book, a Virginia psychologist, offers these and other examples of selfless behavior to refute the view that people are predisposed to wrongdoing and must somehow acquire virtue -- as has been posited by theorists ranging from St. Augustine to William J. Bennett.

"The assumption that human beings are born without virtue colors everything we believe about ourselves and others," Ms. Brehony writes. "It sets in motion a system of convictions that creates distrust and disrespect."

She relates the stories of people across the country who have committed acts of "ordinary grace" and asked for no reward, including many who have started non-profit organizations. She praises the plastic surgeon Charles Horton, for example, who founded Physicians for Peace, a group that sends doctors to impoverished nations to share medical knowledge.

Ms. Brehony also cites some clinical evidence to back up her argument that people do not begin life with a priori evil tendencies, such as studies that claim that newborn babies exhibit empathy as early as the first day of their lives.

She concludes: "Impulses to do good are immediate and instinctual."

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 375 Hudson Street, New York 10014; (212) 366-2564; fax (212) 366-2636; World-Wide Web http://www.penguinputnam.com; 242 pages; $24.95; I.S.B.N. 1-57322-108-2.