DISCOVHKV 



293 



hardly mentioned by ancient wxitcrs) the attacks of 

 those horrible Christian zealots, the Circumcelliones, 

 and also the brutalities of the Vandal invasion. In 

 533 Belisarius destroyed the Vandal power by his 

 victory near Carthage, and proceeded by means of his 

 lieutenant. Solomon, to bring the whole of the province 

 of Africa under B3-zantine rule. This alarmed the 

 Berber tribes of the Aures, the eternal enemies of every 

 dominant power in North Africa, whether Carthaginian, 

 Roman, Vandal, Arab, or French, and they swept down 

 from their mountains in 535 and burnt Timgad in 

 order to prevent the Byzantines from occupying it. 

 Solomon took possession of the mined town, but did 

 not rebuild it. He erected a large and powerful for- 

 tress to the south, and a new town, with Christian 

 monasteries and churches, sprang up round it and 

 enjoyed a semblance of life for another century. Then 

 came the Arab invasions at the end of the seventh 

 century. For a while the province resisted bravely. 

 The Berbers under their romantic queen. The Kahinah, 

 killed the famous Marabout Sidi Okba in an ambush 

 near Biskra, and in aOiance with their former enemies, 

 the Greeks, defeated another Arab general, Hassan ibn 

 €n-Xoman, at Meskianah in 696. Two years later, 

 however, Hassan returned and routed the Berbers. 

 The Kahinah fled to her mountains cursing the large 

 wooden idol of her tribe, that was always carried before 

 her on a camel. From the heights above she may 

 have seen Byzantine Timgad sinking in flames as her 

 ancestor had seen the old town sink a century before. 

 Then the long night of Islam descended upon both for 

 twelve hundred years. Columns and walls were over- 

 thrown b}' earthquakes and covered by the earth 

 brought down by the rains from the neighbouring hills. 

 The wild vegetation of the surrounding steppe crept 

 over the ruins till little else could be seen above the 

 soil but the great western arch usually known as the 

 Arch of Trajan. Fortunately the Arabs who inherited 

 the land were wanderers who did not seek to build 

 towns for themselves. They were content to pitch 

 their flat brown tents above the ruins, and pasture 

 their flocks of goats and herds of camels. The exca- 

 vations authorised and subvented by the French 

 •Government began in 1880 and have been continued 

 to the present time. They have thrown a flood of 

 light upon Roman hfe and history by disclosing the 

 authentic features of a daughter city of Imperial 

 Rome. 



For a detailed description of the ruins of Timgad see 

 ■Guide Illusire de Timgad, by Albert Ballu (published by 

 Neurdein FrSres, Paris), and for further information on town- 

 planning in antiquity see Ancient Town-planning, by F. Haver- 

 ifield (Clarendon Press, Oxford). 



Suggestion and 

 Autosuggestion 



By Robert H. Thouless, M.A. 



Fellow 0/ Corpus Chrisli College, Cambridge ; Lecturer in Psycltology 

 at the University of Manchester 



It has for a long time been known that a statement 

 uttered in a confident manner by another person 

 tends to be accepted by us as true quite independently 

 of any rational grounds for believing it (such as our 

 knowledge of the credibility of the speaker). Such 

 acceptance hy our minds of another person's pro- 

 position in the absence of adequate grounds for its 

 acceptance is called by psychologists suggestion. 



We will consider a typical case of suggestion in 

 everyda}' life. We want to buy something in a shop. 

 The salesman asks a price which wc know is much in 

 excess of its true value. We question his price. He 

 insists in a firm, confident manner that not only is he 

 not overcharging us, but that he is asking less than 

 the true value of the article and that he will lose 

 heavily on the sale. He continues to repeat this, and 

 in time it has happened to most of us that we have 

 bought the article. It was only later when we were 

 out of reach of the salesman's suggestions that we 

 have realised (what we knew at first) that we have 

 paid far more than the article was worth, and that 

 we have been victims of a suggestion. It is clear 

 that, in this case, we have not argued to ourselves 

 that the salesman is probably telling the truth. On 

 the contrary, we know that it is in his interest to be 

 lying. His remark that he will lose on the sale is 

 clearly untrue. We have accepted his statement by 

 no rational process, but by the process of suggestion — 

 the acceptance by our minds of a course of action 

 simply because it has been proposed to us a sufficient 

 number of times in a sufficiently confident manner. 



In suggestion, the idea of a belief (or, as in the 

 example just given, a course of action) presented by 

 some other person actually produces in our minds 

 that belief (or that course of action). This passage 

 from an idea to its reality may be called " realisation." 

 It is in this specialised sense that the words " realisa- 

 tion " and " realise " will be used in this article. In 

 suggestion the idea of a belief, a course of action, a 

 state of feeling, or the cure of some ailment is presented 

 in such a way by another person that it is " realised " 

 by the person receiving it. 



We find that there are wide differences in the 

 readiness with which suggestions are accepted by 

 different persons, and by the same person under 

 different circumstances. These are generally called 

 differences in " suggestibility." Suggestibility varies 



