The Natural History of the Ten Commandments by Ernest Thompson Seton must be his most unusual book. While he had significant grounding in fundamentalist—Calvinist bible study, he had long since given up on organized Christianity. Published in 1907 (the same year as his Arctic trip to Aylmer Lake in Canada), he dedicated the work to “The Beasts of the Field By a Hunter.” Notwithstanding that he had generally given up hunting with a gun by this time.
An Organic Whole
At the beginning Seton tells us of his acceptance of: “the view of modern science, that the whole universe is an organic whole, a thing of growth, with ceaseless upward struggle. Darwin and his school taught us the literal verity of this in material things. Modern psychologists are daily discovering its truth in their own fields. Possibly we may go further and find it apply equally in the moral world.” (Pg.2-3)
Emphasizing his point, Seton claims that The Ten Commandments are not for man alone but are instead “fundamental laws of all highly developed animals.” Old Testament retribution applies not just to human breakers of the Commands, but also to wild animals whose straying from the proscribed path leads individuals to “disaster.” Since the first four are rules about the man-God relationship, he skips to the latter six giving numerous examples from the animal world in support of his claims.
In each case Seton suggests that animal behavior provided a model for human behavior. We learned these behaviors through observation of our wild relatives.
V. Disobedience (Honour thy father and thy mother). Respect for elders must be a common adage across most cultures (or at least lip service for the same). Adolescent animals (from ducks to bears) must follow the instructions of adults or risk death from the various hazards of the world. This is a moral issue for obedience leads to preservation of the individual as well as the species. This law “imposes unreasoning acceptance of the benefits derivable from the experience of those over us” and is “the foundation of all government.” (Pg.7)
VI. Against Murder (Thou shalt not kill). Murder is an action taken against an individual of one’s own species. Rattlesnakes to Mink seem to observe this policy. Aggression between individuals usually ends when submission behavior takes place.
VII. Against Impurity (Thou shalt not commit adultery). “Monogamy is their [wild animals] best solution of the marriage question, and is the rule among all the highest and most successful animals.” (Pg.22) This habit reduces the chance of disease transmittal as well as inbreeding.
VIII. Against Stealing (Thou shalt not steal). Within a species, individuals recognize that “the producer owns the product; unproduced property belongs to the first who discovers and possesses it.” (Pg.33)
IX. Against False Witness (Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor). Seton asks us to accept a broader meaning this term: the prohibition of falsification.
X. Against Coveting (Thou shalt not covet …any thing that is thy neighbour’s). “The broad principle of this commandment is against unduly hankering for a neighbor’s property, against scheming to dispossess him.” (Pg.55)
Evidence for Morality
Seton’s evidence in favor of the existence of morality in nature proves (in his view) our at-one-ment with nature. I suspect this may be a hard sell in these times as it was in Seton’s own. There might be greater comfort and perhaps more evidence by altering the argument for morality, substituting instead that even if nature is amoral, observations could nonetheless have influenced human morality.
Seton gives examples of animals, fleeing from other animals, seeking shelter with humans or other creatures as their only hope for safety. “I was seeking in the animal nature for beginnings of the spiritual life of man, for something that might respond to the four higher ordnances. Maybe in this instinct of the brute in extremity, we have revealed the foundation of something which ultimately had its highest development in man, reaching, indeed, like the Heathen Thinker’s tree, from root in the earthy darkness to its fruit in the Realm of Light.” (Pg. 77-78)