much
mentally as they do physically, whether intellectual ability and moral
goodness tend on the whole to go together, or not.

The _genetic method_ is another of the general lines of attack on
psychological problems. The object here is to trace the mental
development of the individual, or of the race. It may be to trace the
development either of mentality in general, or of some particular
mental performance. It may be to trace the child's progress in
learning to speak, or to follow the development of language in the
human species, from the most primitive tongues up to those of the
great {16} civilized peoples of to-day. It may be to trace the
improvement of a performance with continued practice.

The value of the genetic method is easily seen. Usually the beginnings
of a function or performance are comparatively simple and easy to
observe and analyze. Also, the process of mental growth is an
important matter to study on its own account.

The _pathological method_ is akin to the genetic, but traces the decay
or demoralization of mental life instead of its growth. It traces the
gradual decline of mental power with advancing age, the losses due to
brain disease, and the maladaptations that appear in insanity and
other disturbances. Here psychology makes close contact with
_psychiatry_ which is the branch of medicine concerned with the
insane, etc., and which in fact has contributed most of the
psychological information derived from the pathological method.

The object of the pathological method is, on the one side, to
understand abnormal forms of mental life, with the practical object of
preventing or curing them, and on the other side, to understand normal
mental life the better. Just as the development of a performance
throws light on the perfected act, so the decay or disturbance of a
function often reveals its inner workings; for we all know that it is
when a machine gets out of order that one begins to see how it ought
to work. Failure sheds light on the conditions of success,
maladaptation throws into relief the mental work that has to be done
by the normal individual in order to secure and maintain his good
adaptation. According to the psychiatrists, mental disturbance is
primarily an affair of emotion and desire rather than of intellect;
and consequently they believe that the pathological method is of
special importance in the study of the emotional life.

{17}

Summary and Attempt at a Definition

Havin