24 THE EVOLUTION OF THE METAZOA 



Slavic nation, has been of considerable disadvantage even 

 though the Slovene text appeared together with an extensive 

 German summary. This book was followed by later publica- 

 tions in international languages. The thesis has become best 

 known and discussed through an article published in the 

 United States in the journal Systematic Zoology ; the article 

 was beautifully translated into EngUsh by Professor A. 

 Petrunkevitch for whose translation I wish to express here 

 my warmest thanks. There was no visible reaction to my 

 short lecture given at the Fourteenth International Congress 

 of Zoologists held at Paris. A further essential contribution 

 to the propagation of my ideas was made by Sir Gavin de 

 Beer's 'Evolution as a Process which contained an article writ- 

 ten from a sympathetic point of view by G. S. Carter (1949, 

 1954.), and in the German-speaking area by Professors 

 Ferdinand Pax, (1954) Dr. Otto Steinbock, and by the 

 palaeontologist Miiller (1958), among others. An important 

 contribution to the development of my ideas has been made 

 by Hanson (1958) who discussed the consequences my theory 

 would have for the estimation of the true nature of Cnidaria. 

 It had been expected as well as desired that there would be 

 several critics of my thesis (among them some well-known 

 scholars, e.g. Beklemischew [1958], Laubenfels [1955], Carter 

 [1949, 1954], A. Remane [1957], L. H. Hyman [1940-1958]). 

 No criticism has yet been published which 1 consider to the 

 point and which I would be forced to accept; there have 

 been no critiques which have weakened my conviction or 

 even forced me to abandon my theory. The majority of 

 remarks do not even touch the core of my concept, i. e. my 

 hypothesis about the origin and the position of Cnidaria in 

 the system of the animal classification, but instead they dis- 

 cuss the numerous and important consequences of this hypo- 

 thesis. These consequences undermine the basic pillars of 

 the old concept. It is, therefore, not surprising that they 

 have provoked sharp and occasionally even agressive crit- 

 icism. 



