Caesar says that when the youth of Germany, Gaul, and Britain began to approach the manly age, some more attention seems to have been paid to them by the public and their parents than previously, for when the son was younger it was accounted a shame for a father to be seen in his company. Children who were designed for the priestly order were then put under the direction of the Druids for their instruction in the sciences and in the principles of law, morality, and religion, while those who were intended for a warlike life--according to Caesar--had arms put into their hands by their fathers, or nearest kinsmen, in a public assembly of the warriors of the state or clan. Some vestiges of this custom continued till later times--especially with respect to the eldest sons of the lairds or chieftains--in some parts of the Highlands and western isles of Scotland."[213] =Children among the Early Christians.= The old church fathers were so much given to ascetism that it would appear as if there was really an antagonism to marriage in their time and which must have had a great influence on family life. Donaldson states[214] that children are seldom mentioned in the Christian writings of the second and third centuries, and that almost nothing is said of their training, as if there were but little attention given to their instruction. And yet infants were considered with a much higher standard than among the Greeks and Romans, for, as given in the chapters dealing with children among these nations, infanticide was practiced by them, as the father had the right to expose his children, so that infants on their birth might be abandoned and left to perish, and this was particularly the case with weakly and deformed children and often with female children without blemish. From the very first Christianity condemned the practice and denounced it as murder. They even went further, for the church forbid the practice of the destruction of children before birth. Thus Christianity protected the lives of infants and especially of female infants.