The Roman laws, as the barbarians found them, were the result of a slow growth of a thousand years from the time when the founder attempted to check the slaughter of young children by what must have been, in those primitive times, more or less drastic legislation. That the teachings of Christ and the teachings of the Stoics led to the same result does not detract from the credit due to Christianity for first putting on its proper basis, as we see things now, the standing of the child in the matter of its _rights_. Back of the Roman developments is the Greek attitude toward children, disappointing, if we look for the perfection that we find in art and in philosophy, doubly disappointing when we find that both Plato and Aristotle saw the child only as a possibility—only as something of which we must await developments—only as a human _ovum_. When we come to trace the attitude of other races, of other civilizations, toward children, we find much the same story: out of barbarism, civilization; out of civilization, humanity, though it has been usually the great Semitic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism—that have awakened the humane instinct the world over. The humane teachings of the Stoics were not unlike those of the great religious teachers, but, lacking the intense driving power of religious fervour, it is doubtful if they could have accomplished the revolutions that these three religions did. That all the great nations, the historical divisions of the races, or those that passed out of barbarism into civilization, carried with them some trace of early cannibalistic days or child-murder days, seems a safe conclusion; and while occasional followers and interpreters of the Malthusian philosophy have at times attempted to defend indirectly these practices as part of the checks and balances by which over-population is defeated, the fact remains that the development of the parental instinct, the greatest of civilizing forces, has slowly, but surely, tended to put an end to these “checking” and “balancing” practices. CHAPTER II HUMAN MARRIAGE—EVOLUTION OF THE PARENTAL INSTINCT—SOCIAL CONDITIONS AMONG PAPUANS—CHILD’S PLACE IN THE TRIBE. It is now believed by many scientists that the cradle of the human race was the Indo-Malaysian intertropical lands. The discovery of the remains of the _Pithecanthropus erectus_ in 1892 by Dr. Eugene Dubois in the pliocene beds of East Java, established as a strong probability what was up to that time regarded as a mere speculation. Keane[14] and Sir John Evans[15] now assert that man originated in the East in this vicinity and migrated thence to Europe. In this semi-glacial period, man, having taken on much of his human character and being now an erect animal (although in physical and mental respects he still resembled his nearest kin), had little difficulty in migrating.