THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS by Seton, Ernest Thompson - 1938

Santa Fe: Seton Village Press. Very Good-. 1938. First Edition Thus. Hardcover. 78 pages; Contents are clean and tight in original green cloth binding. Binding has superficial damp stains at lower edge and top of rear board (not affecting contents). This is one of only 400 copies printed of this limited edition of Thompson Seton's essay (Not Signed). Title page printed in black and red. Printed in red and the end of the text: "A lecture delivered at Harvard University in year 1904 by Ernest Thompson Seton. Four hundred copies have been printed on the hand presses of Maurice Taylor at the Seton Village Press. Case binding by Marceil Taylor. 1 Oct 1938." In this work Thompson Seton attempts to demonstrate that animals by their nature adhere to the Ten Commandments. By the end of his brief examination of animal behaviour, he concludes: "The first four commandments have a purely spiritual bearing; the last six are physical. Man is concerned with all, the animals only with the last six." Thompson Seton was associated with the Santa Fe arts and literary community during the 1930s and early 1940s, including artists and authors such as Alfred Morang, Clem Hull, Georgia O'Keeffe, Randall Davey, Raymond Jonson (leader of the Transcendental Painters Group), and Eliseo Rodriguez. In 1933, Seton purchased 100 acres in Santa Fe County, New Mexico upon which he built himself a "castle." Seton alsoset up the small press which published this book -- Seton Village Press closed in 1943 due to World War II. .