Until recently I had taken symmetry in phonemic analysis as something axiomatic and self-evident, needing no discussion. But in 1960 two well-known structuralists found fault with my patterning of the phonemes of Icelandic: on the one hand, the Russian phonologist M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij accused me of doing violence to phonetic fact in order to achieve symmetry; on the other, the American phonemicist A. A. Hill accused me of needlessly taking phonetic facts in a way destructive of symmetrical patterning. According to my Russian critic I am set on symmetry at all costs; according to my American critic, ‘it is clear that for Malone a phonetic “fact” must clearly outweigh any possible symmetry of arrangement’ (249). Confronted with these opposing criticisms of my procedure, I can no longer let symmetry take care of itself; I am forced to weigh its worth in the patterning of phonemes. Hence this paper.