As regards the exterior factors and their role in species for- 

 mation, very much has been said about them lately. One can consider that 

 the unde revaluation of their role which took place in the past has now been 

 outdated although even now the nature of reaction of the organism to the 

 exterior influences is not sufficiently clear. One must think that the 

 complete adequacy of the morphophysiological reaction, as this is propa- 

 gandized at the present time by many, hardly occurs here. For us however, 

 is not this question which is interesting, but the question about interior 

 factors of development and in this connection about the material with which 

 natural selection deals. Strange as it may seem, the question about 

 automotion of the living material which is rather sufficiently analyzed in 

 other regions of knowledge and which represents the basis for the dialectical 

 understanding of the world is clearly underestimated in biology. It is 

 accepted that under the influence of the exterior factors the organism gives 

 a countless quantity of most various departures from the initial type as was 

 first shown by Darwin. However, this can hardly be accepted as the only p. 463 

 possible solution, actually we have a number of factors showing that the 

 change of organisms can take place only in a strictly determined direction 

 and that the quantity of principal variations available is distinctly limited. 

 Practically this is shown to us by the numerous regularities (or norms, 

 nobis) of the evolutionary process, in particular the ones which were laid 

 on the foundation of the theory of homologous series which were worked out 

 by Soviet scholars (N. I. Vavilov, 1920, 1935), concerning oligomerization 

 of homologous and homonymous organs (Dogiel, 1936, 1952, 1954a), con- 

 cerning the principle of polymerization (Dogiel, 1929) we think that the 

 changeability of organisms, which has a phylogenetic significance 

 in a number of cases, is tar from being so unlimited and can be sharply 

 circumscribed by the peculiarities of the automotion (self-moving, self- 

 direction, nobis) of the living material which possesses, at a given stage, 

 such a structure as enables it to change only in a determined direction. 

 Thus, we recognize the presence of clearly oriented evolutionary changes. 

 In the opinions of V. A. Dogiel on the present question, with which we are 

 in complete agreement, these exist. Hence, it is quite clear that the 

 meaning of selection in our opinion is much more delimited than is usually 

 accepted. We are not stopping in detail on these questions, inasmuch as they 

 have a completely independent interest and demand a special, sufficiently 

 detailed research. The conditions which have been indicated were cited here 

 only to make clear our principal views on the given question because this 

 is indispensable for what will follow. 



If one accepts this point of view, it is fully understandable that 

 the change of the species in a strictly determined direction under weakly- 

 changing exterior conditions, just as we accepted in the cases of 

 Chimaericolidae, Diclybothriidea and so forth, is possible. The consideration 

 about the fact that contemporary species represent the remnants of groups 

 which had powerful development in the past can be cited as a confirmation 

 to our conception of the development of these groups; however, although 



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