ABSTRACT
In his Autobiography John Stuart Mill places great stress on his life as an example of education, a pedagogic saga. He also suggests that, in an "age of transition in opinions," his life is prototypic. The initial locus for that development was his family. What was the reality of John Stuart Mill's family and what was the effect of this family without a past on John Stuart Mill is explained in this chapter. Family history is a relatively new field. While there has long been a general kind of intuitive knowledge that the family is the basic molecule of society in which the individual takes shape. And on whose basis the state, for example, models itself, until recently there has been little detailed examination of how this takes and has taken place. In short, the modern conjugal family, increased affective ties, and birth control appear to go together, psychologically as well as logically.
