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Essays on Frege’s Basic Laws of Arithmetic
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Essays on Frege’s Basic

Laws of Arithmetic
Edited by
P H I L I P A . E B E RT A N D M A R C U S R O S SB E R G
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3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© the several contributors 2019
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
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above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019945694
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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
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Contents
Foreword vii
Contributors x
1 The Basic Laws of Cardinal Number 1

Richard Kimberly Heck
2 Axioms in Frege 31
Patricia A. Blanchette
3 When Logic Gives Out. Frege on Basic Logical Laws 57
Walter B. Pedriali
4 The Context Principle in Frege’s Grundgesetze 90
Øystein Linnebo
5 Why Does Frege Care Whether Julius Caesar is a Number?
Section 10 of Basic Laws and the Context Principle 115
Joan Weiner
6 Grundgesetze and the Sense/Reference Distinction 142
Kevin C. Klement
7 Double Value-Ranges 167
Peter Simons
8 The Proof of Hume’s Principle 182
Robert C. May and Kai F. Wehmeier
9 Frege’s Theorems on Simple Series 207
William Stirton
10 Infinitesimals, Magnitudes, and Definition in Frege 235
Jamie Tappenden
11 Frege’s Relation to Dedekind: Basic Laws and Beyond 264
Erich H. Reck
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12 Frege on Creation 285

Michael Hallett
13 Mathematical Creation in Frege’s Grundgesetze 325
Philip A. Ebert and Marcus Rossberg
14 Frege on the Real Numbers 343
Eric Snyder and Stewart Shapiro
15 Frege’s Little Theorem and Frege’s Way Out 384
Roy T. Cook
16 “How did the serpent of inconsistency enter Frege’s paradise?” 411
Crispin Wright
17 Second-Order Abstraction Before and After Russell’s Paradox 437
Matthias Schirn
18 Formal Arithmetic Before Grundgesetze 497
19 Definitions in Begriffsschrift and Grundgesetze 538
Michael Kremer
20 A Brief History of English Translations of Frege’s Writings 567
Michael Beaney
21 Translating ‘Bedeutung’ in Frege’s Writings: A Case Study and
Cautionary Tale in the History and Philosophy of Translation 588
Michael Beaney
22 Contemporary Reviews of Frege’s Grundgesetze 637
Philip A. Ebert and Marcus Rossberg
Index 653
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Foreword
Gottlob Frege published his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik in two volumes; the
first appeared in 1893, the second in 1903. Grundgesetze was to fulfill Frege’s
ambition to demonstrate that arithmetic and analysis are reducible to logic,
and thus establish a view that we now call ‘logicism’. In previous work, in
particular in Begriffsschrift (1879) and Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884),
Frege provides some of the formal and philosophical foundations for his logi-
cism. More specifically, his first book contains the initial formulation of the lo-
gical system—the eponymous Begriffsschrift—while his second book eschews
formulae altogether and offers a philosophical foundation for his logicist po-
sition in the philosophy of mathematics. Both publications are, in their own
right, groundbreaking.
Begriffsschrift constitutes “perhaps the greatest single contribution to lo-
gic ever made and it was, in any event, the most important advance since
Aristotle.”1 On the other hand, the philosophical methodology of Grundla-
gen, in particular its analytic writing style, led many to think of Frege as one
of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy. Michael Dummett considers
Grundlagen “the most brilliant piece of philosophical writing of its length
ever penned”.2 In this work scholars locate the origins of the linguistic turn
in philosophy, which shaped much of twentieth-century philosophy.
However, Frege’s standing in the history of analytic philosophy does not
simply derive from these two groundbreaking books, but it is also based on
a series of lectures and articles that Frege wrote just before the publication
of the first volume of Grundgesetze. Function und Begriff (1891), ‘Über Sinn
und Bedeutung’ (1892), and ‘Ueber Begriff und Gegenstand’ (1892) make
for a trilogy of Godfather-like proportions with part II being, of course, one
of the most widely read articles in philosophy. Its influence in the philosophy
of language and in linguistics would be hard to exaggerate.
How then does Grundgesetze, a work that Frege without doubt intended
to be his magnum opus, fit into the list of Frege’s philosophical and logical
achievement? Most scholars have, until recently, viewed Frege’s Grundgesetze
1 Alexander George and Richard Kimberly Heck (2000), ‘Frege, Gottlob’, in Edward Craig
(ed.), Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London and New York: Routledge, page 296.
(Orig. publ. under the name “Richard G. Heck, Jr”.)
2 Michael Dummett (2007), ‘Intellectual Autobiography’, in Randall E. Auxier and Lewis
Edwin Hahn, eds. The Philosophy of Michael Dummett, vol. XXXI of The Library of Living Philo-
sophers, Chicago and La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, page 9.
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viii Foreword
as containing for the most parts, merely the formal details of his logicist pro-
ject which we now know to have failed. Frege’s derivations of fundamental
arithmetical principles, which cover about half of either volume, are based
on an inconsistent axiom: the infamous Basic Law V. It is thus perhaps no
surprise that little attention was paid to Frege’s predominately formal work.
Interestingly, however, it is Grundgesetze that contains Frege’s most force-
ful and most famous rejection of psychologism in logic, and the relevant pas-
sages from the Foreword of the first volume were the first pieces of Frege’s cor-
pus to be translated into English. Moreover, Wittgenstein, Russell, Jourdain,
Peano, and other philosophers and mathematicians of the time who seriously
engaged with Frege’s work paid close attention to Grundgesetze. Nonetheless,
throughout the rest of the twentieth century more and more emphasis was
placed on Frege’s other writings—writings that are independent of the fail-
ure of his logical foundations, or indeed independent of his logicism more
generally.
In 1983, Crispin Wright published Frege’s Conception of Numbers as Ob-
jects, in which he reconstructed Frege’s derivation of the axioms of arithmetic
from what would come to be known as “Hume’s Principle”, or “HP”. Wright
also conjectured there that HP, unlike Basic Law V, is consistent.3 This in-
spired George Boolos to look more carefully at Frege’s informal derivations in
Grundlagen, and also at the formal work in Begriffsschrift.4 Boolos’s student
Richard Kimberly Heck then began investigating Frege’s technical work on
arithmetic in Grundgesetze.5 Around the same time, Peter Simons and Michael
Dummett also published their discussions of Frege’s formal work on the real
numbers in Part III of Grundgesetze.6 The increasing interest in Frege’s proofs
was accompanied by a renewed interest in Frege’s philosophy of mathematics,
given also the rise of a view labelled ‘neo-logicism’, ‘neo-Fregeanism’, or simply
‘abstractionism’, as championed by Crispin Wright and Bob Hale,7 and the
3 For the first published consistency proofs of HP see two reviews of Frege’s Conception of
Numbers as Objects: one by John P. Burgess (1984, Philosophical Review 93:638–40), and the other
by Allen Hazen (1985, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 63:251–4); and see Boolos (1987), as
cited in note 4 below.
4 George Boolos (1987), ‘The Consistency of Frege’s Foundations of Arithmetic’, in Judith
Jarvis Thomson (ed.), On Being and Saying: Essays for Richard Cartwright, Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, pages 3–20; George Boolos (1985), ‘Reading the Begriffsschrift’, Mind 94:331–44.
5 Richard Kimberly Heck (1993), ‘The Development of Arithmetic in Frege’s Grundgesetze der
Arithmetik’, Journal of Symbolic Logic 58:579–601 (originally published under the name “Richard
G. Heck, Jr”). See also their more recent books Frege’s Theorem (2011) and Reading Frege’s Grund-
gesetze (2012), both Oxford: Clarendon Press.
6 Peter Simons (1987), ‘Frege’s Theory of the Real Numbers’, History and Philosophy of Logic
8:25–44; Michael Dummett (1991), Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics. London: Duckworth.
7 Compare here, e.g., Crispin Wright (1983), Frege’s Conception of Numbers as Objects, Aber-
deen: Aberdeen University Press; Bob Hale (1987), Abstract Objects, Oxford: Basil Blackwell;
Bob Hale and Crispin Wright (2001), The Reasons’ Proper Study: Essays towards a Neo-Fregean
Philosophy of Mathematics, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Philip A. Ebert and Marcus Rossberg, eds.
(2016) Abstractionism: Essays in Philosophy of Mathematics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Foreword ix
work by Michael Dummett. Yet a broader engagement with Frege’s magnum

opus faced the obstacle that only parts of the two volumes had been translated.
Together with Crispin Wright, we started work on a new translation of Grund-
gesetze in 2003, and, with the help of many distinguished Frege scholars, the
first complete English translation, Basic Laws of Arithmetic, volumes I and II,
appeared in 2013.8
The present volume is the first collection of essays that focuses on Frege’s
Grundgesetze and aims to highlight the technical as well as philosophical rich-
ness of Frege’s major work. The companion brings together twenty-two Frege
scholars, whose contributions discuss a wide range of topics arising from both
volumes of Grundgesetze. And so may this collection, even if belatedly, con-
tribute to a renaissance of Grundgesetze and help to establish this work as one
of Frege’s many masterpieces.
We would like to thank our editor, Peter Momtchiloff at Oxford Uni-
versity Press, for his support and his patience. Thanks to Denise Bannerman
for meticulous proof-reading. Typesetting a nearly 700-page volume in LATEX
proved to be yet another big challenge, and we would like to thank Colin
McCullough-Benner and Andrew Parisi who provided invaluable assistance
with this arduous task. We would also like to thank Colin for his work on the
Index and his additional help with copyediting and proof-reading.
And thanks to Crispin, for getting it all started, and for everything.
Philip Ebert, Stirling, Scotland

Marcus Rossberg, Storrs, Conn., USA
8 For more details on earlier translations as well as the first complete translation of Grundgesetze,
and how the latter came about, consult Crispin Wright’s Foreword and our Translators’ Introduc-
tion in Gottlob Frege (2013), Basic Laws of Arithmetic. Derived Using Concept-Script, volumes I
and II, trans. and ed. Philip A. Ebert and Marcus Rossberg with Crispin Wright. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
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Contributors
Michael Beaney is Professor of History of Analytic Philosophy at the Hum-

boldt-Universität zu Berlin and Professor of Philosophy at King’s Col-
lege London.
Patricia A. Blanchette is Glynn Family Honors Chair of Philosophy at the
University of Notre Dame.
Roy T. Cook is CLA Scholar of the College and John M. Dolan Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Philip A. Ebert is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Stirling.
Michael Hallett is John Frothingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at
McGill University, Montreal.
Richard Kimberly Heck is Professor of Philosophy at Brown University, in
Providence, Rhode Island.
Kevin C. Klement is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachu-
setts Amherst.
Michael Kremer is the Mary R. Morton Professor of Philosophy and in the
College at the University of Chicago.
Øystein Linnebo is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo.
Robert C. May is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics at
the University of California, Davis.
Walter B. Pedriali is Associate Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St
Andrews.
Erich H. Reck is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at
Riverside.
Marcus Rossberg is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Connecticut.
Matthias Schirn is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Mu-
nich and a member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy.
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Contributors xi
Stewart Shapiro is O’Donnell Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State Uni-

versity, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Connecti-
cut, and Distinguished Presidential Fellow at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem
Peter Simons, FBA, MRIA, is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Trinity
College Dublin.
Eric Snyder is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Munich Center for Mathematical
Philosophy, LMU Munich, and Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Ashoka University.
William Stirton works as an administrative assistant for Edinburgh Leisure
Ltd.
Jamie Tappenden is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor.
Kai F. Wehmeier is Dean’s Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and
of Language Science at the University of California, Irvine.
Joan Weiner is Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University.
Crispin Wright, FBA, FRSE, FAAAS, is Professor of Philosophy at New York
University, Professor of Philosophical Research at the University of Stirl-
ing, and Regius Professor of Logic Emeritus at Aberdeen University.
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1
The Basic Laws of Cardinal Number
Frege begins his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik as follows:

In my Grundlagen der Arithmetik, I aimed to make it plausible that arithmetic is a
branch of logic and needs to rely neither on experience nor intuition as a basis for its
proofs. In the present book this is now to be established by deduction of the simplest
laws of cardinal number by logical means alone. (Grundgesetze I, 1)
The plausibility of what is now called ‘logicism’ was supposed to have been
established not only by the philosophical arguments in Die Grundlagen but,
more importantly, by the proofs of basic arithmetical principles that Frege
sketches in §§70–83. But the character of those arguments left a large lacuna:
I do not claim to have made the analytic character of arithmetical propositions more
than plausible,1 because it can always still be doubted whether they are deducible solely
from purely logical laws, or whether some other type of premiss is not involved at some
point in their proof without our noticing it. This misgiving will not be completely
allayed even by the indications I have given of the proof of some of the propositions;
it can only be removed by producing a chain of deductions with no link missing, such
that no step in it is taken which does not conform to some one of a small number of
principles of inference recognized as purely logical. (Frege, 1884, §90)
But how can we be sure that no link is missing? That problem was the one
that had led to Frege’s interest in logic, as he makes explicit in Begriffsschrift:
[W]e divide all truths that require justification into two kinds, those for which the
proof can be carried out purely by means of logic and those for which it must be sup-
ported by facts of experience. … [W]hen I came to consider the question to which of
these two kinds the judgments of arithmetic belong, I first had to ascertain how far
one could proceed in arithmetic by means of inferences alone, with the sole support of
those laws of thought that transcend all particulars. … To prevent anything intuitive
from penetrating here unnoticed, I had to bend every effort to keep the chain of infer-
ences free of gaps. In attempting to comply with this requirement in the strictest way
possible I found the inadequacy of language to be an obstacle; no matter how unwieldy
1 Austin translates this as ‘probable’, but I have altered the translation, since Frege uses the
same word here as in Grundgesetze.
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2 Richard Kimberly Heck
the expressions I was ready to accept, I was less and less able, as the relations became
more and more complex, to attain the precision that my purpose required.
(Frege, 1879, 5–6)
What Frege needed to do, then, to fill the lacuna, was to provide formal proofs
of the various propositions he had only proven informally in Die Grundlagen.
Frege seems already to have achieved something along these lines even
before he wrote Die Grundlagen. In a letter written in August 1882, he says:
I have now nearly completed a book in which I treat the concept of number and
demonstrate that the first principles of computation, which up to now have generally
been regarded as unprovable axioms, can be proved from definitions by means of logical
laws alone, so that they may have to be regarded as analytic judgements in Kant’s sense.
It will not surprise me and I even expect that you will raise some doubts about this
and imagine that there is a mistake in the definitions, in that, to be possible, they
presuppose judgements which I have failed to notice, or in that some other essential
content from another source of knowledge has crept in unawares. My confidence that
this has not happened is based on the application of my concept-script, which will not
let through anything that was not expressly presupposed… (Frege, 1980, 99–100)
Nonetheless, it would be more than a decade after Frege wrote those words,
and nine years after the publication of Die Grundlagen, before he actually
would provide the gap-free proofs he had promised.2
Those proofs are contained in Part II of Grundgesetze. Part I of the book is
devoted to the ‘Exposition of the Concept-Script’, that is, to the explanation
of the formal language in which Frege’s proofs will be stated and of the formal
theory in which they will be developed, that is, of the basic laws and rules of
inference of his system (see Heck, 2012, Part I). Part II contains the ‘Proofs
of the Basic Laws of Cardinal Number’. All of the Dedekind–Peano axioms
for arithmetic are proven there, including the statement that every natural
number has a successor, whose proof Frege had sketched in §§82–3 of Die
Grundlagen.
It is therefore clear that Part II of Grundgesetze plays an important role
in Frege’s philosophy of mathematics. That makes it really quite astonishing
that it has only recently been published in English translation (Frege, 2013).3
There are, of course, several reasons why that is. Frege’s formal system is, as is
well-known, inconsistent, since Russell’s Paradox is derivable in the concept-
script from Frege’s Basic Law V. One might therefore suppose that Frege’s
proofs can be of little interest, since anything can be proven in an inconsistent
system. There is also the problem of Frege’s notation, which is utterly unlike
that used by any other author and which has a reputation for being difficult to
2 I discuss some of the reasons for the delay in my other contribution to this volume (Heck,
2019).
3 There were no translations at all available when I started working on Grundgesetze in the
early 1990s, until Jason Stanley and I did a very (very) rough one in the summer of 1992. That
was used in a seminar George Boolos and I taught together in 1993. It was one of the first things
I put on my web site when I got one, around 1996, and at least a few other people used it in
seminars of their own.
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The Basic Laws of Cardinal Number 3
read.4 In fact, however, those of us who have learned to read it know that it is
not difficult to read. Rather, its unfamiliarity makes it something of a challenge
to learn to read. And we have known since the mid-1980s that Frege’s system,
though inconsistent, is not irremediably inconsistent. As was first observed
by Peter Geach (1955, 570), and emphasized shortly thereafter by Charles
Parsons (1995, 198), Frege’s own arguments in Die Grundlagen make very
limited appeal to Basic Law V, which is the source of the inconsistency. Law
V is used only in the proof of what is now known as “Hume’s Principle”, or
HP: The number of F s is the same as the number of Gs if, and only if, the F s
are in one–one correspondence with the Gs. The remainder of the argument
appeals only to HP. And, as Crispin Wright (1983, 154–8) conjectured and
several people then proved (Burgess, 1984; Hazen, 1985; Boolos, 1998a), HP
is consistent. So, as Wright (1983, §xix) showed in detail, Frege’s proofs in Die
Grundlagen can be reconstructed in a consistent sub-theory of the inconsistent
theory he implicitly assumes.
The obvious question, which George Boolos directed to me in the summer
of 1991, is whether something similar but stronger is true of Grundgesetze. In
Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics, which was published that year, Sir Michael
Dummett seems to assert that there is:
Crispin Wright devotes a whole section of his book … to demonstrating that, if we
were to take [HP] as an implicit or contextual definition of the cardinality operator,
we could still derive all the same theorems as Frege does. He could have achieved the
same result with less trouble by observing that Frege himself gives just such a derivation
of those theorems. He derives them from [HP], with no further appeal to his explicit
definition. (Dummett, 1991, 123)
What Boolos asked me was simply whether this is true. I set to reading Grund-
gesetze and soon discovered that, if it was, it was going to take work to show
it. It is easy enough to verify that, after proving HP, Frege makes “no further
appeal to his explicit definition”. But that is not enough. The crucial ques-
tion is whether Frege makes no further appeal to Basic Law V, and he most
certainly does. Hardly a page of Part II lacks terms for value-ranges, of which
extensions of concepts are a special case, and the logical law governing value-
range names is, of course, Basic Law V. More precisely, due to the details of
how Frege formalizes various notions, almost every result he proves depends
upon his Theorem 1, which is a generalization of the principle known as naïve
comprehension:
a ∈ {x : F x} ≡ F a
And that principle leads directly to Russell’s Paradox, once we take F ξ to be:
ξ∈
/ ξ and a to be: {x : x ∈/ x}.5
4 Not to mention typeset. I scanned the formulas for the translation Jason and I did. How
they were handled in the new translation is well-related by Ebert and Rossberg (Frege, 2013,
xxx–xxxii).
5 Theorem 1 itself is proven from Basic Law V and Frege’s definition of the analogue, for
value-ranges, of membership (Heck, 2012, §1.2).
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But it also quickly became clear to me that many of the uses Frege makes
of value-ranges can easily be eliminated. For example, Frege almost always
quantifies over the extensions of concepts instead of over concepts, so that we
find things like:
∀f (. . . a ∈ f . . . )
rather than things like:
∀F (. . . F a . . . )
But, as just illustrated, this is easily remedied. And Frege’s other uses of value-
ranges proved to be eliminable as well. So Dummett turned out to be right, in
spirit if not in detail: Modulo uses of value-ranges that are essentially just for
convenience, Part II of Grundgesetze really does contain a formal derivation
of axioms for arithmetic from HP.
And there is much more in Part II. Frege’s proof of axioms for arithmetic
comprises only about a third of it. In the remainder, Frege proves a number of
results concerning finitude, infinity, and the relationship between these two
notions. When I examined those proofs closely, it turned out that Frege used
Law V in them, too, only for convenience. And there was much of philosoph-
ical interest both in Frege’s formal arguments and in the informal discussion
of them contained in the “Analysis” sections.
My goal in this chapter, then, is to provide a brief overview of what Frege
accomplishes in Part II and to give some indication of the philosophical and
historical interest this material has. Further details, and actual arguments for
the interpretive claims to be made below, can be found in Part II of my book
Reading Frege’s Grundgesetze, of which this chapter is a kind of précis.
And since this chapter is meant to provide an introduction to Frege’s
formal work on arithmetic, I will present his results using modern notation,
so as to make the discussion more accessible. I will also silently translate away
Frege’s reliance upon value-ranges, since that serves only to obscure his accom-
plishments.6
1.1 THE PROOF OF HP

Frege’s first task in Grundgesetze is to prove HP, which may be stated, in mod-
ern notation, as:
Nx : F x = Nx : Gx ≡ ∃R[∀x∀y∀z(Rxy ∧ Rxz → y = z) ∧
∀x∀y∀z(Rxz ∧ Ryz → x = y) ∧
∀x(F x → ∃y(Gy ∧ Rxy) ∧
∀y(Gy → ∃x(F x ∧ Rxy)]
Here, ‘Nx : F x’ is to be read: the number of F s.

6 I shall also silently alter some of the translations from which I quote, to make them uniform
in their terminology.
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Frege’s formulation of HP might initially seem very different, and not just
because his notation is so different.7 Translating Frege’s notation into ours, of
course, he would write HP as:
Nx : F x = Nx : Gx ≡ ∃R[Map(R)(F, G) ∧ Map(Conv(R))(G, F )]
Here, ‘Map(R)(F, G)’, which Frege would write as ‘f SgS⟩r’,8 may be read:
R maps the F s into the Gs. Conv(R), which Frege would write as ‘Ur’, is the
converse of R, defined the obvious way:
df
Conv(R)(a, b) ≡ Rba
So HP itself, as Frege would formulate it, says that the number of F s is the
same as the number of Gs if, and only if, there is a relation that maps the F s
into the Gs and whose converse maps the Gs into the F s.
The mapping relation itself is defined as follows (Grundgesetze I, §38):
df
Map(R)(F, G) ≡ Func(R) ∧ ∀x(F x → ∃y(Rxy ∧ Gy))
Here, ‘Func(R)’, which Frege would write as ‘Ir’, means that R is “single-
valued” or “functional”. It too is defined the obvious way (Grundgesetze I,
§37):
df
Func(R) ≡ ∀x∀y(Rxy → ∀z(Rxz → y = z))
So R maps the F s into the Gs just in case R is single-valued and each F is
related by Rξη to some G. Note carefully: into, not onto. That R maps the F s
into the Gs says, of itself, nothing whatsoever about the relative cardinalities
of the F s and the Gs: As long as there is at least one G, there will always be
a relation which maps the F s into the Gs, in Frege’s sense, whatever concept
F ξ may be.
To see the relation of Frege’s formulation of HP to the usual one, unpack
the right-hand side of his version HP using the definitions:
∃R[Map(R)(F, G) ∧
Map(Conv(R))(G, F )]
7 Theorem 32, which is the right-to-left direction, reads:

”u = ”v
uS(vS⟩q)
vS(uS⟩Uq)
Talk about different! Green, Rossberg, and Ebert (2015) discuss Frege’s notation in detail.
8 Here and below, I shall use uppercase letters for concepts and relations and the corresponding
lowercase letters for the extensions of those concepts and relations.
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∃R[Func(R) ∧
∀x(F x → ∃y(Rxy ∧ Gy)) ∧
Func(Conv(R)) ∧
∀x(Gx → ∃y(Conv(R)(x, y) ∧ F y))]
∃R[∀x∀y(Rxy → ∀z(Rxz → y = z)) ∧

∀x(F x → ∃y(Rxy ∧ Gy)) ∧
∀x∀y(Conv(R)(x, y) → ∀z(Conv(R)(x, z) → y = z)) ∧
∀x(Gx → ∃y(Conv(R)(x, y) ∧ F y))]
∃R[∀x∀y(Rxy → ∀z(Rxz → y = z)) ∧

∀x(F x → ∃y(Rxy ∧ Gy)) ∧
∀x∀y(Ryx → ∀z(Rzx → y = z)) ∧
∀x(Gx → ∃y(Ryx ∧ F y))]
What Frege has done is group ‘∀x∀y(Rxy → ∀z(Rxz → y = z))’ and

‘∀x(F x → ∃y(Gy∧Rxy)’ in the first conjunct, ‘Map(R)(F, G)’, and to group
‘∀x∀y(Rxz → ∀z(Ryz → x = y))’ and ‘∀y(Gy → ∃x(F x ∧ Rxy)’ in the
second conjunct, ‘Map(Conv(R))(G, F )’. We are more inclined nowadays to
group the conjuncts ‘∀x∀y(Rxy → ∀z(Rxz → y = z))’ and ‘∀x∀y(Rxz →
∀z(Ryz → x = y))’ (R is a one–one function…) and ‘∀x(F x → ∃y(Gy ∧
Rxy)’ and ‘∀y(Gy → ∃x(F x ∧ Rxy)’ (… from the F s onto the Gs). So, in
the end, the difference between Frege’s formulation and ours is mostly one of
emphasis, though Frege’s formulation has some technical advantages over the
usual one (Heck, 2012, §6.3).
In modern presentations, ‘Nx : F x’ is treated as a primitive notion gov-
erned by HP, which is itself treated as an axiom. Frege, by constrast, means
to prove HP and so defines ‘Nx : F x’ in terms of extensions.9 Now, in Grund-
gesetze, Frege treats extensions as a kind of value-range, but his definition of
number in Grundgesetze is otherwise the same as the one given in §68 of Die
Grundlagen:10
The number of F s is the extension of the concept: is [the extension of ]
a concept that is equinumerous with F .
We can formalize this as:
df
Nx : F x ≡ x̂{∃G[(x = ŷ(Gy) ∧ Eq(F, G)]}
9 What most obviously corresponds to our ‘Nx : F x’ is Frege’s ‘”f ’. In fact, however, as
– ε’.
Gregory Landini pointed out to me, ‘Nx : F x’ is definable in Frege’s system as ‘” εF
10 Frege’s definition does not contain the bracketed occurrence of the phrase ‘the extension of ’.
I argue elsewhere (Heck, 2019, §18.1) that it is nonetheless what he means.
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where ‘Eq(F, G)’ abbreviates: ∃R[Map(R)(F, G) ∧ Map(Conv(R))(G, F )].

Here ‘x̂(F x)’ means: the extension of the concept F , and the notion of ex-
tension is to be governed by a version of Basic Law V:11
x̂(F x) = x̂(Gx) ≡ ∀x(F x ≡ Gx)
The proof of HP then needs little more than the observation that Eq is an
equivalence relation.
In fact, however, as May and Wehmeier (2019) point out in their contri-
bution to this volume, Frege never actually proves HP as a biconditional: He
proves its two directions, but never bothers to put them together. The right-
to-left direction is Theorem 32, which is the goal of the first chapter of Part II,
Chapter Alpha.12 The left-to-right direction is Theorem 49, which is proven in
Chapter Beta. The proof of the former is quite straightforward, and it follows
the outline in §73 of Die Grundlagen closely. The proof needs only the trans-
itivity and symmetry of equinumerosity. The proof of (49) that Frege gives is
somewhat peculiar, because it uses the definition of number in a more essen-
tial way than it really should. There is, however, a simpler proof, which Frege
must have known, that needs only the reflexivity of equinumerosity (Heck,
2012, §6.8).
Another point worth noting about these proofs is that the proof of (32)
needs only the right-to-left direction of Law V, which Frege calls Law Va and
which is the “safe” direction, whereas (49) needs the left-to-right direction,
Law Vb, which is the “unsafe” direction, the one that gives rise to Russell’s
Paradox. On reflection, this should not be surprising, since (32) is the “safe”
direction of HP, which by itself has no significant ontological consequences,
since it is compatible with there being only one number, shared by all the con-
cepts there are. Theorem 49, on the other hand, is the ontologically profligate
direction of HP, which entails the existence of infinitely many numbers.
1.2 THE AXIOMS OF ARITHMETIC
After having proven HP, Frege turns his attention to the proofs of various fun-
damental principles concerning cardinal numbers, including what we now call
the Dedekind–Peano axioms, for which see Table 1.1. Here ‘Nξ ’ is a predicate
to be read ‘ξ is a natural number’, and ‘Pξη ’ is a predicate to be read as ‘ξ
immediately precedes η in the number-series’. To prove these axioms, Frege
must of course define the arithmetical notions that occur in them.
11 As said, Frege actually works with the more general notion of a value-range, but, surpris-
ingly, he never makes use of the more general notion. All the value-ranges in which he is actually
interested in Grundgesetze are extensions of concepts.
12 Frege does not call these divisions chapters, but it seems the obvious name for them.
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Table 1.1. One Version of the Dedekind–Peano Axioms

1. N0
2. ∀x∀y(Nx ∧ Pxy → Ny)
3. ∀x(Nx → ∃y(Pxy))
4. ¬∃x(Nx ∧ Px0)
5. ∀x(Nx → ∀y∀z(Pxy ∧ Pxz → y = z))
6. ∀x∀y∀z(Nx ∧ Ny ∧ Pxz ∧ Pyz → x = y)
7. ∀F [F 0 ∧ ∀x(Nx ∧ F x → ∀y(Pxy → F y)) → ∀x(Nx → F x)]
The definitions Frege gives in Grundgesetze are the same as the ones given
in Die Grundlagen. Frege defines zero, which he writes as ‘0’, as the number of
objects that are not self-identical (Grundgesetze I, §41; see Frege, 1884, §74):
df
0 ≡ Nx : x ̸= x
His definition of predecession, which he writes as ‘mS(nSs)’, is as follows

(Grundgesetze I, §43):
df
Pmn ≡ ∃F ∃x[F x ∧ n = Nz : F z ∧ m = Nz : (F z ∧ z ̸= x)]
That is, m precedes n if, as Frege puts it in Die Grundlagen, ‘there exists a
concept F , and an object falling under it x, such that the Number which
belongs to the concept F is n and the Number which belongs to the concept
“falling under F but not identical with x” is m’ (Frege, 1884, §76). We shall
return to the definition of ‘Nξ ’.
Frege proves Axiom 5 in Chapter Beta as Theorem 71; Axiom 6 in Chapter
Γ as Theorem 89; and Axiom 4 in Chapter Epsilon as Theorem 108. The
proofs are straightforward, but there is a philosophical discussion that occurs
during Frege’s informal exposition of the proof of Theorem 71 that is of sub-
stantial interest. It concerns the proof of Theorem 66:
F c ∧ Gb ∧ Nz : (Gz ∧ z ̸= b) = Nz : (F z ∧ z ̸= c) →
Nz : F z = Nz : Gz (66)
which is the key lemma in the proof of (71).13 To prove (66), what we want
to show is that, if there is a one–one correlation between the Gs other than
13 Suppose that Pxy and Pxw. Then, by the definition of ‘P’, there are F and c such that:
F c ∧ Nz : F z = y ∧ Nz : (F z ∧ z ̸= c) = x
and there are G and b such that:
Gb ∧ Nz : Gz = w ∧ Nz : (Gz ∧ z ̸= b) = x
So Nz : (Gz ∧ z ̸= b) = x = Nz : (F z ∧ z ̸= c), and (66) now implies that Nz : Gz = Nz : F z ,
so w = y , and we are done.
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b and the F s other than c, and if b is a G and c is an F , then there is also a

one–one correlation between the F s and the Gs. Frege writes:14
If one were to follow the usual practice of mathematicians, one might say something
like this: we correlate the objects, other than b, falling under the concept G, with the
objects, other than c, falling under the concept F by means of the known relation,
and we correlate b with c. In this way, we have mapped the concept G into the concept
F and, conversely, the latter into the former. So … the cardinal numbers that belong
to them are equal. This is indeed much briefer than the proof to follow which some,
misunderstanding my project, will deplore on account of its length. What is it that we
are doing when we correlate objects for the purpose of a proof? (Grundgesetze I, §66)
There is, of course, nothing unusual about the sort of reasoning Frege re-
hearses, but he has a question to raise about it. It is not, of course, that he
thinks such reasoning might be invalid. But he wants to know what justifies
it.
Frege first emphasizes that, when we establish a correlation in this sense,
we do not create anything but “merely bring to attention, apprehend, what is
already there” (compare Frege, 1884, §26). He then seizes the opportunity to
take a swipe at psychologism. Having slain that familiar foe, Frege considers
the question how we might formulate “a postulate, in the style of Euclid”, that
permits such correlations, answering:
[It] would have to be understood this way: ‘Any object is correlated with any object’
or ‘There is a correlation between any object and any object’. What then is such a
correlation if it is nothing subjective, created only by our making? However, a particular
correlation of an object to an object is not what can be at issue here…; rather we require
a genus of correlations, so to speak, what we have so far called, and will continue to
call, a relation. (Grundgesetze I, §66)
So what the act of correlating brings to attention is a relation, and Frege goes
on to discuss how the concept-script allows us to specify such relations pre-
cisely and to show that they have the various properties we need them to have.
In fact, in this case, Frege goes on to suggest, the usual reasoning encourages
us to overlook certain subtleties, which emerge in his careful, rigorous present-
ation of the proof.
What is at issue here is a question fundamental to Frege’s logicism. The
informal argument he mentions involves just the sort of toxic mix of reason
and intuition that tends to obscure the epistemological status of the result
proved. One crucial question, in particular, is how we know that the “correl-
ations” we need actually exist. And, so long as one thinks of correlating as
something we do, rather than of correlations as something we discover, this
will tend to make one suppose that the existence of correlations depends some-
how upon mental activity. Frege’s view is, of course, different. In his system,
the existence of concepts, relations, and the like is guaranteed by Rule 9 on
14 In his exposition, Frege speaks of such things as “the u-concept”, by which he means the
concept whose value-range u is. I have silently replaced such talk with direct references to con-
cepts.
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the list given in §48. This rule allows for the uniform replacement of a free
variable, of arbitrary type, by any well-formed expression of the appropriate
type. Such a substitution principle is equivalent to the comprehension scheme
of second-order logic
∃R∀x∀y[Rxy ≡ A(x, y)]
which asserts the existence of a relation co-extensive with any given formula of
the language (so long as it does not contain the variable R free). So Frege’s view
is that logic itself commits us to the existence of any relation we can describe.
Since “correlations” are just relations, it is thus logic, and not psychology, that
affirms their existence.
To return to the proofs of the axioms, then, what remain to be proved at the
end of Chapter Epsilon are the axioms concerning the notion of a natural (or
finite) number. So we now need to consider Frege’s definition of that notion.
It is, again, essentially the same as that given in Die Grundlagen, and it uses
Frege’s definition of the so-called ancestral, which he introduces in §23 of
Begriffsschrift. Given a relation Q, we say that a concept F is hereditary in the
Q-series just in case, whenever x is F , each object to which Q relates it is F :
∀x∀y(F x ∧ Qxy → F y)
We now say that an object b follows an object a in the Q-series just in case b
falls under every concept that is hereditary in the Q-series and under which
each object to which Q relates a falls. Formally, writing ‘Q∗ ab’ for ‘b follows
a in the Q-series’, Frege’s definition of the strong ancestral,15 which he writes
as ‘aS(bSMq)’, is (Grundgesetze I, §45):
df
Q∗ ab ≡ ∀F [∀x(Qax → F x) ∧ ∀x∀y(F x ∧ Qxy → F y) → F b]
Frege then defines the weak ancestral, which he writes as ‘aS(bSRq)’, thus
(Grundgesetze I, §46):
df
Q∗= ab ≡ Q∗ ab ∨ a = b
The concept Nξ is then definable as P∗= 0ξ . So an object is a natural number

just in case it belongs to the P-series beginning with 0. Frege has no special
symbol for this. He does, however, regularly read ‘P∗= 0ξ ’ as ‘ξ is a finite num-
ber’ (e.g., in Grundgesetze I, §108).
Axioms 1 and 2 then follow from general facts about the ancestral, The-
orems 140 and 133, respectively. Famously, Axiom 7, the induction axiom,
also follows from Frege’s definition. Matters are more complicated than often
seems to be supposed, however. We can quite easily prove:
Q∗= ab → ∀F (F a ∧ ∀x∀y(F x ∧ Qxy → F y) → F b) (144)
15 The strong ancestral is so-called because we need not have Q∗ aa, whereas we always have
Q∗= aa.
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from which
P∗= 0b → ∀F (F 0 ∧ ∀x∀y(F x ∧ Pxy → F y) → F b)
follows by substitution. So we have
∀F [F 0 ∧ ∀x∀y(F x ∧ Pxy → F y) → ∀x(Nx → F x)]
by simple logical manipulations and the definition of ‘N’. But this is weaker
than Axiom 7. The hypothesis of induction is not that, whenever x is F , its
successor is F ; it is only that, whenever x is a natural number that is F , its
successor is F . That is, induction is:
∀F [F 0 ∧ ∀x∀y(Nx ∧ F x ∧ Pxy → F y) → ∀x(Nx → F x)]
This is easy enough to prove—it follows by substitution from Frege’s Theorem

152—but the difference between it and what the definition of the ancestral
delivers immediately turns out to be historically significant, as we shall see
shortly.16
The only remaining axiom, then, is Axiom 3, which asserts that every num-
ber has a successor. Lying behind Frege’s proof of Axiom 3 is a picture of how
the natural numbers are generated. The generative process begins, of course,
with zero. Frege insists that zero exists, even if nothing else does, because zero
is the number of things that are non-self-identical, and the non-self-identical
things exist even if nothing at all does. But if zero exists, then there is a num-
ber that is the number of things that are less than or equal to zero, and that
number we may call ‘one’. By HP, one is not zero: There can be no one–one
map between the things that are non-self-identical and the things that are less
than or equal to zero, since there is at least one thing less than or equal to zero,
namely, zero. But now both zero and one exist, and so there is a number that
is the number of things that are less than or equal to one. Call that number
‘two’. By HP, two can be neither zero nor one. So zero, one, and two exist,
and there is a number that is the number of things less than or equal to two…
Formally, what we want to prove is:
P∗= 0b → P(b, Nx : P∗= xb) (155)
which is the central result of Chapter H (Eta) and which says, roughly, that
every natural number is succeeded by the number of numbers in the P-series
ending with it (roughly, the number of numbers less than or equal to it). The
proof proceeds by induction, where we substitute:
P(ξ, Nx : P∗= xξ)
for ‘F ξ ’. So we need to prove that zero falls under this concept:
16 The difference is also of some technical import, since the weaker principle is easily provable
even in predicative systems that do not allow us to prove induction (Heck, 2011).
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P(0, Nx : P ∗= x0) (154)

and that it is hereditary in the P-series beginning with 0:
∀y[P∗= 0y ∧ P(y, Nx : P∗= xy) → ∀z(Pyz → P(z, Nx : P∗= xz))] (150)
The proof of (154) is easy.
The interest lies in the proof of (150). It follows by generalization from:
P∗= 0d ∧ P(d, Nx : P∗= xd) ∧ Pda → P(a, Nx : P∗= xa) (150ε)
To prove this, suppose that d is a natural number, that d precedes the number
of members of the P-series ending with d, and that d precedes a. We must
show that a precedes the number of members of the P-series ending with a.
To do so, we must, by the definition of P, find some concept F and some
object x falling under F such that a is the number of F s other than x and the
number of F s is the same as the number of members of the P-series ending
in a. That is, we must show that:
∃F ∃x[a = Nz : (F z ∧ z ̸= x) ∧ F x ∧ Nz : P∗= za = Nz : F z]
The concept in question is to be P∗= ξa; the object in question is to be a itself.
Hence, we must show that:
a = Nz : (P∗= za ∧ z ̸= a) ∧ P∗= aa ∧ Nz : P∗= za = Nz : P∗= za
The last two conjuncts are trivial. The first we may derive from:
a = Nx : P∗= xd
Nx : P∗= xd = Nx : (P∗= xa ∧ x ̸= a)
by the transitivity of identity. The former follows from the fact that P is single-
valued, since, by hypothesis, we have both Pda and P(d, Nx : P∗= xd). The
latter, in turn, is the consequent of:
P∗= 0a ∧ Pda → Nx : P∗= xd = Nx : (P∗= xa ∧ x ̸= a) (149)
which Frege derives from:
P∗= 0a ∧ Pda → ∀x{P∗= xd ≡ (P∗= xa ∧ x ̸= a)} (149α)
and the extensionality of the cardinality operator:
∀x(F x ≡ Gx) → Nx : F x = Nx : Gx (96)
He derives Theorem 149α from the following two results:
Pda → [(P∗= xa ∧ x ̸= a) → P∗= xd]
Pda ∧ P 0a → [P∗= xd → (P∗= xa ∧ x ̸= a)]
∗=
which are Theorems 148α and 148ζ . For the latter, we need the central result
of Chapter Zeta:
P∗= 0b → ¬P∗ bb (145)
This says that there are no “loops” in the natural series of numbers, and it too
is proved by induction.
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The argument here will look familiar to anyone who has studied Frege’s
informal proof, in §§82–3 of Die Grundlagen, that every natural number has
a successor. The proof in Grundgesetze has much the same structure, and many
of the steps in the proof are also mentioned in Die Grundlagen. For example,
(145) is the last proposition mentioned by Frege in §83. But there are im-
portant differences between the two proofs, as well. A close reading of Frege’s
discussion of the proof in §114 of Grundgesetze shows, in fact, that Frege was
aware that the proof sketched in Die Grundlagen is actually incorrect (Boolos
and Heck, 2011; Heck, 2012, §6.7). The earlier proof purports to rely only
upon what, as mentioned before, trivially follows from the definition of nat-
ural number:
∀F [F 0 ∧ ∀x∀y(F x ∧ Pxy → F y) → ∀x(Nx → F x)]
rather than upon mathematical induction proper:

∀F [F 0 ∧ ∀x∀y(Nx ∧ F x ∧ Pxy → F y) → ∀x(Nx → F x)]
In particular, the proof in Die Grundlagen was supposed to go via:

P(d, Nx : P∗= xd) ∧ Pda → P(a, Nx : P∗= xa)
which is a direct formalization of the proposition marked ‘1.’ in §82 of Die
Grundlagen and which is also (150ε) minus its first conjunct, P∗= 0d. Frege
mentions this formula explicitly in §114—it is the formula labeled (α)—only
then to say, in a footnote, that it “is, it seems, unprovable…”. It is hard to
see why Frege would so much as have discussed this proposition if it did not
figure crucially in his earlier argument. And that, to me, is the most impressive
evidence that Frege knew his earlier proof was flawed.
It follows, presumably, that Frege cannot actually have had a fully worked
out, formal proof of the existence of successors when he wrote Die Grundlagen.
He simply could not have made such a mistake otherwise.17 More interest-
ingly, it makes it plain that Frege was aware that there might be propositions
of his formal language that he would regard as true but that were nonetheless
unprovable from the Basic Laws he was then prepared to accept. For there
is good reason to think Frege regarded the “unprovable” formula (α) as be-
ing true. There is a very simple argument for it that uses Dedekind’s result
that every infinite set is Dedekind infinite, a claim that Frege accepted as true,
though, like many mathematicians of his time, he regarded Dedekind’s proof
as insufficiently rigorous (Frege, 1892, 271). I’ll return to this point below.
Finally, careful analysis of Frege’s proof in Grundgesetze reveals that the
only facts about numbers to which it essentially appeals are the extensionality
17 And that, in turn, suggests that the manuscipt mentioned in the letter from 1882 cannot
have contained such a proof, which makes it an interesting question what it did contain. Frege
says in the letter that he has set out to prove “the first principles of computation”, and the existence
of successors is not naturally so described.
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of the cardinality operator (96), the fact that P is one–one, and the fact that
zero has no predecessor. Let me say that again: Once P has been shown to
be one–one and zero has been shown to have no predecessor, the only further
appeal to HP that is needed is that required to prove Theorem 96. But as
Boolos (1998b, 278ff) has emphasized, we might plausibly regard (96) as a
logical truth. So, in a sense, HP is not really involved in the proof that every
number has a successor, and we might reasonably regard Frege as having shown
that the existence of successors is a logical consequence of the other axioms
concerning predecession, given how he defines that notion. Frege does not
present the proof in sufficient generality to make this obvious, but various
remarks he makes along the way make it plausible that he knew his proof had
this consequence (Heck, 2012, §6.6).
1.3 THE INFINITE
By the end of Chapter H (Eta), then, Frege has proven all of the Dedekind–
Peano axioms. As mentioned earlier, however, Frege’s investigation of the Basic
Laws of Cardinal Number is by no means complete at that point.
Chapter Iota is divided into four pieces. In the first, I(a), Frege proves the
existence of an infinite cardinal number, namely, the one we know as ℵ0 but
which Frege calls ‘Endlos’ and writes: i. It is defined as the number of natural
numbers (Grundgesetze I, §122):
i = Nx : P∗= 0x
df
The key result is that Endlos is not a natural number, i.e., that it is infinite:
¬P ∗= (0, i) (167)
Given (145), it is enough to show that Endlos follows itself in the natural
series of numbers:
P(i, i) (165)
To prove this, we need only find a concept F and an object a such that
i = Nx : F x ∧ F a ∧ i = Nx : (F x ∧ x ̸= a)
We may take F ξ to be: P∗= 0ξ and a to be 0. So we have to prove:
i = Nx : P∗= 0x ∧ P∗= 00 ∧ i = Nx : (P∗= 0x ∧ x ̸= 0)
The first two conjuncts are trivial. To prove the last, Frege shows, as Theorem
165β , that P itself correlates the natural numbers one–one with the natural
numbers other than zero. Frege thus makes good here on a promise he had
made in §§84–6 of Die Grundlagen to secure the existence not just of infinitely
many numbers but also of infinite numbers, purely logically.
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The most interesting result of Chapter Iota, however, is the one proven in
I(d):
∃Q[Func(Q) ∧ ¬∃x(Q∗ xx) ∧

∀x(Gx → ∃y(Qxy)) ∧ ∃x∀y(Gy ≡ Q∗= xy)] →
N x : Gx = i (263)
Suppose that there is a relation Q satisfying the following conditions: First,

it is single-valued; second, no object follows after itself in the Q-series; third,
each G stands in the Q-relation to some object; and finally, the Gs are the
members of the Q-series beginning with some object. Then, says Theorem
263, the number of Gs is Endlos.
Frege explains the strategy of his proof in in §144:
We now prove … that Endlos is the cardinal number which belongs to a concept, if the
objects falling under that concept can be ordered in a series that starts with a certain
object and proceeds endlessly, without looping back into itself and without branching.
By an “unbranching” series, Frege means one whose determining relation is
single-valued; by a series that does not “loop back into itself ”, he means one
in which no object follows after itself; by a series that “proceeds endlessly”, he
means one every member of which is immediately followed by some object.
It turns on showing that Endlos is the cardinal number that belongs to the concept
member of such a series … We use proposition (32) for this and need to prove that
there is a relation which maps the cardinal number series into the Q-series starting
with x and whose converse maps the latter into the former. The obvious strategy is to
correlate 0 with x, 1 with the next member immediately following after x in the Q-
series, and, in this manner, to correlate each immediately following cardinal number
to the immediately following member of the Q-series. We always pair one member of
the cardinal number series with one member of the Q-series and form a series out of
these pairs. … If, then, the pair (n; y) belongs to our series that starts with the pair
(0; x), n stands to y in the mapping relation that is to be exhibited.
We have two series, which we may picture thus:
P P P P P
0 ! 1 ! ··· ! m ! n ! ···
x = x0 ! x1 ! · · · ! xm ! xn ! · · ·
Q Q Q Q Q
and the result is thus to be proven by defining, by recursion, a relation between

the natural numbers and the members of the Q-series beginning with x: The
number n which is the immediate successor of a given number, m, will be
related to the member of Q-series, call it xn , that follows immediately after
the member of the Q-series to which m is related, say, xm . The proof of the
theorem will require a proof of the validity of such definitions. Frege’s sugges-
tion is that we may define this relation by defining a series of ordered pairs,
namely, the series (0; x0 ), (1; x1 ), etc., where, in general, (m; x) will stand in
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the “series-forming relation” to (n; y) just in case Pmn and Qxy . The members
of this series will then be the extension of the relation to be defined.
The main work in Frege’s proof thus consists in showing how to define
relations like this one recursively. There is a great deal of messiness here caused
by the way Frege uses ordered pairs in his proof. His reasons for doing so are
technical, and he seems to have been aware that this use was eliminable (Heck,
2012, §7.2). For present purposes, then, I shall ignore these complications.
One of the most important lemmas in the proof of (263) is:
Func(Q) ∧ ∀y(Q∗= ay → ∃z(Qyz)) →

Map((PPQ)h0,a )(P∗= 0ξ, Q∗= aξ) (256)
Here, (PPQ)h0,a is the relation defined in the way just explained. (PPQ) is the
“coupling” of the relations P and Q, defined so that
(PPQ)((a; b), (c; d)) ≡ Pac ∧ Qbd
(PPQ)h0,a is then defined in such a way that
(PPQ)h0,a (x, y) ≡ (PPQ)∗= ((0; a), (x; y))
So (256) says that, if Q is single-valued and the Q-series beginning with a is

endless—if every member of that series is followed by another—then (PPQ)h0,a
maps the natural numbers into the members of the Q-series beginning with
a. But if we eliminate ‘Map’ via its definition, then we have:
Func(Q) ∧ ∀y(Q∗= ay → ∃z(Qyz)) →

Func((PPQ)h0,a ) ∧ ∀x[P ∗= 0x → ∃y(Q∗= ay ∧ (PPQ)h0,a (x, y))]
And what this says is that, if Q is single-valued, and if the Q-series beginning
with a is endless, then (PPQ)h0,a is a single-valued relation and every natural
number is in its domain. That is, (PPQ)h0,a is a total function on the natural
numbers. Moreover, it is not difficult to see that its range contains only mem-
bers of the Q-series beginning with a. So (256) allows for the definition of
functions by recursion.
The usual set-theoretic statement of this sort of result is:
Suppose g : A → A; let a ∈ A. Then there is a unique function φ : N →
A such that φ(0) = a and φ(Sn) = g(φ(n)).
Assume the antecedent and define Qξη ≡ [η = g(ξ)]. Q is then single-valued,
since g(ξ) is a function, and the Q-series beginning with a is endless, since
g is totally defined on its range. Thus, the antecedent of (256) is satisfied, so
(PPQ)h0,a is single-valued and its domain contains all the natural numbers.
Uniqueness is proven by induction.
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As an example, consider the recursion equations:

φ(0) = a
φ(Sm) = S(φ(m))
As above, we define Qξη as η = Sξ ; thus, Qξη is just Pξη . So (PPP)h0,a (ξ, η)

is single-valued and satisfies these equations. We may write them, in more
familiar form, as:
a+0=a
a + Sm = S(a + m)
So the moral of the story is that
(PPP)h0,ζ (ξ, η)
defines η = ζ + ξ for natural numbers. I’ll leave it as an exercise to show how
multiplication can now be defined in terms of addition.
Theorem 256 follows from a more general result:
Func(R) ∧ ¬∃y(R∗= my ∧ R∗ yy) ∧
Func(Q) ∧ ∀x[Q∗= ax → ∃y(Qxy)] →
Map((RPQ)hm,a )(R∗= mξ, Q∗= aξ) (254)
which licenses the recursive definition of functions not just on the natural
numbers but on any “simple” series: one that is single-valued and contains no
“loops”. And Theorem 254 in turn follows from an even more general result:
∀y[Q∗= ay → ∃z(Qyz)] →
∀x{R∗= mx → ∃y[(RPQ)hm,a (x, y) ∧ Q∗= ay]} (241ζ )
which licenses the recursive definition of relations that may or may not be
single-valued on any endless series whatsoever. There are natural applications
to be made of (241ζ ). For example, let R be any relation. Then it is easy to
see that (RPP)ha,0 (b, n) just in case it is possible to get from a to b via a series
of n R-steps, that is, if we have
a = x0 Rx1 R · · · Rxn = b
where the xi need not be distinct. We’ll see an application of this below.
Perhaps the most intriguing result here, though, is one Frege does not
explicitly mention, though it is an obvious consequence of (254). Exchanging
‘R’ with ‘Q’, and ‘m’ with ‘a’, we have
Func(Q) ∧ ¬∃y(Q∗= ay ∧ Q∗ yy) ∧
Func(R) ∧ ∀x[R∗= mx → ∃y(Rxy)] →
Map((QPR)ha,m )(Q∗= aξ, R∗= mξ)
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But Theorem 259 tells us that (QPR)ha,m is the converse of (RPQ)hm,a , so:
Func(Q) ∧ ¬∃y(Q∗= ay ∧ Q∗ yy) ∧

Func(R) ∧ ∀x[R∗= mx → ∃y(Rxy)] →
Map(Conv((RPQ)hm,a ))(Q∗= aξ, R∗= mξ)
Putting this together with (254), then, we have:
Func(Q) ∧ ¬∃y(Q∗= ay ∧ Q∗ yy) ∧ ∀x[Q∗= ax → ∃y(Qxy)] ∧

Func(R) ∧ ¬∃y(R∗= my ∧ R∗ yy) ∧ ∀x[R∗= mx → ∃y(Rxy)] →
Map((RPQ)hm,a )(R∗= mξ, Q∗= aξ) ∧
Map(Conv((RPQ)hm,a ))(Q∗= aξ, R∗= mξ)
I call this result the Isomorphism Theorem, because it tells us that all “simply
endless” series are isomorphic.18 Theorem 263 follows easily from it: Just sub-
stitute ‘P’ for ‘R’ and ‘0’ for ‘m’ and apply the axioms of arithmetic. In effect,
then, Frege’s proof of (263) proceeds by first proving that all series satisfying
certain conditions are isomorphic and then concluding that, since the series
of natural numbers satisfies those conditions, every such series is isomorphic
to it and hence equinumerous with it.
The conditions in question are:
1. Func(Q)
2. ¬∃x(Q∗= ax ∧ Q∗ xx)
3. ∀x(Q∗= ax → ∃y(Qxy))
But if we write the conditions slightly differently, we can see more easily what
Frege has done here. Write ‘0’ instead of ‘a’ and ‘P’ instead of ‘Q’ and intro-
duce a predicate ‘Nξ ’ in place of ‘Q∗= aξ ’, as in the statement of (263). Then,
eliminating ‘Func(P)’ via its definition, we have:
1. ∀x∀y∀z(Pxy ∧ Pxz → y = z)
2. ¬∃x(Nx ∧ P∗ xx)
3. ∀x(Nx → ∃y(Pxy))
4. Nx ≡ P∗= 0x
Conditions (1)–(4) are axioms for arithmetic, and we may think of them as
recording Frege’s own preferred axiomatization. The first condition here is,
of course, stated in the form in which Frege proves it: Predecession is single-
valued period, and not just on the natural numbers. But if we weaken it to:
1′ . ∀x(Nx → ∀y∀z(Pxy ∧ Pxz → y = z))
18 Strictly speaking, we would also need to prove that the orderings given by Q∗ and R∗ are
isomorphic. Frege does not prove this part of the result. Nor does Dedekind. But it is not hard
to prove.
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then the Dedekind–Peano axioms are easily derived from Frege’s, and con-
versely. What the proof of Theorem 263 shows is thus that any two structures
satisfying Frege’s axioms for arithmetic are isomorphic, just as Dedekind’s
proof of the corresponding result shows that any two structures satisfying his
axioms are isomorphic (Dedekind, 1902, Theorem 132).
Frege proves the converse of Theorem 263 as Theorem 207, in I(c). Putting
the two together, we have:
N x : Gx = i ≡
∃Q[Func(Q) ∧ ¬∃x(Q∗ xx) ∧
∀x(Gx → ∃y(Qxy)) ∧ ∃x∀y(Gy ≡ Q∗= xy)]
Since the right-hand side is purely second-order, Frege would have regarded
it as uncontroversially logical. Theorems 207 and 263 thus yield a purely lo-
gical characterization of countably infinite concepts: They are the concepts
the objects falling under which can be ordered as a simply endless series.
1.4 THE FINITE

In Chapters K and Λ, Frege proves analogous results for finitude. To state
these results, we need another definition:
df
Btw(Q; a, b)(x) ≡ Func(Q) ∧ ¬Q∗ bb ∧ Q∗= ax ∧ Q∗= xb
Frege reads ‘Btw(Q; a, b)(x)’, which he writes as ‘xS(a; b) q ’, as: x belongs
y
to the Q-series running from a to b (Grundgesetze I, §158). But we may read
it, more briefly, as ‘x is Q-between a and b’. So x is Q-between a and b if,
and only if: Q is single-valued; b does not follow itself in the Q-series; and x
belongs both to the Q-series beginning with a and to that ending with b.
The central result of Chapter K is then:
∃Q∃x∃y∀z[F z ≡ Btw(Q; x, y)(z)] → P∗= (0, Nx : F x) (327)
and the central result of Chapter Λ is:
P∗= (0, Nx : F x) → ∃Q∃x∃y∀z[F z ≡ Btw(Q; x, y)(z)] (348)
Together, of course, these imply:
∃Q∃x∃y∀z[F z ≡ Btw(Q; x, y)(z)] ≡ P∗= (0, Nx : F x)
which constitutes a purely logical characterization of finite sets: A set is finite
if it can be ordered as a simple series that ends.
To understand the point of Frege’s so characterizing finitude, it is essential
to look at his proofs of these two theorems. Frege derives Theorem 327 from:
P∗= (0, Nz : Btw(Q; a, b)(z)) (325)
There is a trivial case here. It may be that nothing is Q-between a and b, be-
cause Q isn’t single-valued, or because b follows after itself in the Q-series, or
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because b doesn’t belong to the Q-series beginning with a. The trivial case is
covered by (325γ ), so the work goes into proving:
Q∗= ab ∧ Func(Q) ∧ ¬Q∗ bb → P∗= (0, Nz : Btw(Q; a, b)(z)) (321)
The obvious way to prove this is to assume that Func(Q) and ¬Q∗ bb and then
to prove
Q∗= ab → P∗= (0, Nz : Btw(Q; a, b)(z))
by “logical induction” (Heck, 2012, §8.1). But Frege’s proof is different, and
much more interesting, though far more complicated.
Assume the F s have been ordered as a simple series that ends. Frege’s proof
rests upon the insight that, given such an ordering of the F s, they can be
mapped one–one onto an initial segment of the natural numbers. This picture
P P P P
0 ! 1 ! ··· ! m ! n
"R "R "R "R
a = x0 ! x1 ! · · · ! xm ! xn = b
Q Q Q Q
should make the idea clear enough, and also indicate the close relation between
this argument and the proof of (263). All we need to do is to define the rela-
tion R, which we can do by recursion, and then to show that it has the right
properties.
Frege does not proceed in quite this way, however, and his not so proceed-
ing is our best indication of the role (327) and (348) were intended to play
in his philosophy of arithmetic. What Frege does instead is to produce a one–
one mapping between the F s and the numbers between one and some natural
number n. On reflection, it is clear why. One way of producing a simple or-
dering of the F s is to count them, that is, to associate each one of them, in
turn, with a number, beginning with one and ending with some number n,
which is then the number of F s. Indeed, the relation Frege shows to correlate
the members of the relevant series with the numbers between 1 and n is the
relation: ξ is the η th member of the series, defined in the way described earlier
as: (QPP)ha,1 . This very correlation itself amounts to a counting of the F s. The
intuitive content of (327) and (348) is thus that the number of F s is a natural
number just in case the F s can be counted and that, in that case, the number
of F s is the natural number one reaches by counting.
This is especially clear from the proof of (348). Like (321), it admits of a
direct and utterly uninteresting proof by induction. Again, however, Frege’s
proof is more complicated than it needs to be and more illuminating than it
might have been. He derives (348) from two lemmas, the first of which is:
Nz : Gz = Nz : Btw(R; a, b)(z) → (347)

∃Q∃x∃y∀z[Gx ≡ Btw(Q; x, y)(z)]
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In words: If the number of Gs is the same as the number of objects R-between

a and b, for some R, a, and b, then the Gs can be ordered as a simple series
that ends. The other lemma is:
P∗= 0n → n = Nz : Btw(P; 1, n)(z) (314)
So, if the number of Gs is a natural number, then the number of Gs is the same
as the number of numbers between 1 and the number of Gs; substituting into
(347) completes the proof.
That is to say, the proof of (348) actually proceeds via the following:
Nz : Gz = Nz : Btw(P; 1, n)(z) → ∃Q∃x∃y∀z[Gx ≡ Btw(Q; x, y)(z)]
which (347) generalizes. It is this which is really Frege’s goal in his proof of
(348), but Frege rarely passes up an opportunity to prove the most general
result possible. The proof proceeds by showing that, if the numbers between
1 and n can be mapped one–one onto the Gs, then the Gs can be ordered as a
simple series that ends: The relation that so orders the Gs is the image of the
predecessor relation under the relevant mapping. (The same picture as above
works here. It is just that we have R this time, and we need to define Q.) To
correlate the Gs one–one with the numbers between 1 and n is basically just
to count them. So Theorem 348 amounts to this: If the number of Gs is finite,
then they can be counted.
No doubt, (327) and (348) have a purely technical point: They yield a nice
characterization of finite sets, one closely related to Zermelo’s (Heck, 2012,
§8.5). But they also have an epistemological point: They show that the concept
of finitude is a concept of logic. Frege would have regarded his characterization
of finitude, given as it is in purely second-order terms, as uncontroversially
logical. But these two theorems have another point, too, for they reveal that
the notion of finitude thus shown to be logical is a rigorous version of our
intuitive conception of finitude, the intuitive conception being: A finite set is
one that can be counted. That is why Frege proves these theorems as he does,
why both proofs go through Theorem 314.
1.5 THE FINITE AND THE INFINITE

As well as proving the mentioned results about the finite and the infinite, Frege
also proves several results that relate these two notions. The first of these is:
P ∗= (0, Nx : F x) ∧ Nx : Gx = i → Nx : (F x ∨ Gx) = i (172)
which is the central result of I(b) and which says that the “union” of a count-
ably infinite concept and a finite concept is countably infinite. But the most
interesting results of this type are in the portions of Part II that are contained
in the second volume of Grundgesetze, which was published ten years after the
first.
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Chapter Mu, the first in Volume II, is devoted to the proof of:
Nx : Gx = i ∧ ∀x(F x → Gx) →
P∗= (0, Nx : F x) ∨ Nx : F x = i (428)
What this says is that every sub-concept of a countably infinite concept is
either countably infinite or finite. Frege’s proof of this claim is long and com-
plex, and few of the details seem to be of much philosophical interest. But one
of the results he proves along the way, the central result of sub-chapter M(a),
is of significant interest:19
Func(Q) ∧ ¬∃y(Q∗ yy) ∧ ∃y(Q∗= ay ∧ F y) →
∃z[Q∗= az ∧ F z ∧ ¬∃x(Q∗= ax ∧ F x ∧ Q∗ xz)] (359)
The antecedent affirms that the Q-series is simple and that there is an F in
the Q-series beginning with a. The consequent says that, if so, then there is a
first F in the Q-series beginning with a, that is, an F that is preceded, in that
series, by no other F . So (359) is a generalization of the least number principle.
To derive the least number principle, we need to weaken the antecedent by
replacing ‘¬∃y(Q∗ yy)’ with ‘¬∃y(Q∗= ay ∧ Q∗ yy)’ and then replace ‘Q’ with
‘P’ and ‘a’ with ‘0’ to reach:
Func(P) ∧ ¬∃y(P∗= 0y ∧ P∗ yy) ∧ ∃y(P∗= 0y ∧ F y) →
∃z[P∗= 0z ∧ F z ∧ ¬∃x(P∗= 0x ∧ F x ∧ P∗ xz)]
The first two conjuncts are Theorems 71 and 145, so we have:

∃y(P∗= 0y ∧ F y) →
∗=
∃z[P 0z ∧ F z ∧ ¬∃x(P∗= 0x ∧ F x ∧ P∗ xz)]
which just is the least number principle, as Frege would have understood it.
Why does Frege prove these results? Theorem 428 is, to be sure, of signi-
ficant interest simply as a fact about cardinal numbers: It tells us that there is
no cardinal number between the finite numbers and Endlos. Frege seems to
have had a particular interest in results of this kind. When he says, in the first
paragraph of the Foreword, that “propositions about the cardinal numbers are
not yet present with the completeness initially planned” (Grundgesetze I, v),
the one proposition he mentions explicitly is:
P∗= (0, Nx : Gx) ∧ ∀x(F x → Gx) → P∗= (0, Nx : F x) (443)
which he proves in Chapter Nu, and which is obviously in much the same
spirit as (428). But there is something else that (428) tells us that would have
been extremely important to Frege.
19 Frege states the result using a new definition that encapsulates what is in the consequent. But
we will not need that definition here.
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Part II of Grundgesetze is concerned exclusively with the cardinal numbers,

but there is also a Part III, which is concerned with the real numbers.20 In order
to develop the theory of the reals, Frege will need to show that the reals exist,
and to do that he will need to show that there are continuum-many objects
in the domain. HP will not yield continuum-many objects: There is a model
of HP in which there are only countably many objects in the domain. But
something stronger is true: We can actually interpret the theory HP + ‘the
only objects that exist are the natural numbers and Endlos’ in HP itself. The
interpretation is simply a relativization to: P∗= 0x ∨ x = i, and the key result
needed for the argument is (428): What we need to know is that, if we have
a concept that is true only of natural numbers and Endlos, then its cardinal
number is either a natural number or Endlos.
Was Frege aware of this consequence of Theorem 428? He nowhere men-
tions it, but it is an argument of a sort that would have been familiar to him:
Arguments of this type were common in geometry at the time, and Frege uses
them in his own non-foundational work (Tappenden, 2000). And, as already
said, this result would have been of great interest to Frege, since it implies
that the theory of the reals will need resources beyond HP: If HP + ‘the only
objects that exist are the natural numbers and Endlos’ is interpretable in HP,
then so is HP + ‘the universe is countable’. So if HP is consistent, so is HP +
‘the universe is countable’. But then it cannot follow from HP that there are
continuum-many objects.
1.6 FURTHER UNTO THE INFINITE
At first glance, Chapter Omicron is an odd hodgepodge of results.21 The first

result Frege proves, in O(a), is:
∀x(Gx → F x) ∧ ∀x(Γx → Φx) ∧

Nx : Gx = Nx : Γx ∧ Nx : (F x ∧ ¬Gx) = Nx : (Φx ∧ ¬Γx) →
Nx : F x = Nx : Φx (472)
In words: If every G is an F and every Γ is a Φ, and the number of Gs is the

number of Γs, and the number of F s that are not G is the number of Φs that
are not Γ, then the number of F s is the number of Φs. Or: If one can take
the same number of objects out of the F s and the Φs and end up with the
same number of objects in each case, then one started with the same number
of objects.
20 I believe there was also to be a Part IV, concerned with the complex numbers (Heck, 2012,
3, esp. n. 6).
21 Chapter Xi contains a proof that cardinal addition is unique, but not a proof that sums
always exist. There is something of value, I think, to be said about the matter (Heck, 2012, ch.
10), but I shall not pursue it here, as it is somewhat tangential to the story I am trying to tell.
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The goal of O(b) is:
∀x(Gx → F x) ∧ P(Nx : Gx, Nx : Gx) → P(Nx : F x, Nx : F x) (476)
In words: If every G is F , and the number of Gs follows itself in the number-

series, then the number of F s follows itself in the number-series, too. And
there are two results proven in O(c):
∃z[P(Nx : F x, z)] (480)

∗=
Nx : Gx = i ∧ ∀x(Gx → F x) → ¬P (0, Nx : F x) (484)
The former says that every number, not just every natural number, has a suc-
cessor; the latter, that no concept that has a countably infinite sub-concept is
finite.
So, as said, Chapter O looks like an odd collection of results. What might
be their purpose?
Sundholm (2001, 61, n. 17) reports that, in the summer of 1889, Frege
taught a seminar on Dedekind’s Was Sind und Was Sollen die Zahlen? A few
years later, he writes in his review of Cantor’s Contributions to the Theory of the
Transfinite:
Mr. Dedekind gives as the characteristic mark of the infinite that it is similar to a proper
part of itself…, after which the finite is defined as the non-infinite, whereas Mr. Cantor
tries to do what I have done: first to define the finite, after which the infinite appears
as the non-finite. Either plan can be carried through correctly, and it can be proved
that the infinite systems of Mr. Dedekind are not finite in my sense. This proposition
is convertible [that is, it has a true converse]; but the proof of [the converse] is rather
difficult, and it is hardly executed with sufficient rigour in Mr. Dedekind’s paper.
(Frege, 1892, 271/180)
What we have in Chapter O, I suggest, are the somewhat meager fruits of
Frege’s investigation of the relationship between the two notions of infinity
he mentions here: The notion of infinity given by ¬P∗= (0, Nx : F x), which
is further characterized by the results discussed in Sections 1.3 and 1.4 above,
and the notion we now know as Dedekind infinity: A concept is Dedekind
infinite if it can be put into one–one correspondence with one of its proper
sub-concepts. I think, in particular, that Chapter O contains the results of
Frege’s attempt to give a properly rigorous proof of the converse he mentions:
that every infinite set is Dedekind infinite.
Dedekind proves in Was Sind? (1902) that a concept is Dedekind infinite
if, and only if, it has a countably infinite sub-concept. Frege need have had
no quarrel with Dedekind’s proof of this fact, which it is easy to formalize in
Frege’s system using (263). And given this fact, (484) is what Frege says, in
the passage just quoted, “can be proved”, namely, that “the infinite systems
of Mr. Dedekind are not finite in [Frege’s] sense”. But, of course, we do not
find in Chapter O a proof of the converse that Frege mentions in the review
of Cantor: that Frege infinite sets are Dedekind infinite. That is unsurprising,
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since we now know that this result cannot be proven without the axiom of
choice—more precisely, the axiom of countable choice—and there is no axiom
of choice in Frege’s formal system. But this converse would have been of great
interest to Frege.
On the one hand, Frege has shown that a concept is of finite number if,
and only if, the objects falling under it can be ordered as a simple series that
ends (327, 348); on the other, that a concept is of countably infinite number
just in case the objects falling under it can be ordered as a simple series that
does not end (207, 263). But then it seems natural to wonder whether—and
perhaps even more natural to conjecture that—every concept is either finite or
has a countably infinite subconcept, that is, that every concept is either finite
or Dedekind infinite. One might reason informally thus. Suppose we set out
to build a simple series from the objects falling under F , successively choosing
distinct F s and adding them to the series so far constructed. If, at some point,
we exhaust the F s, then the F s will have been ordered as a simple series that
ends. And if we never exhaust the F s, won’t some of the F s then have been
ordered as a simple series that does not end?
The informal proof just given is hardly one with which Frege would have
been prepared to settle: It contains another dangerous mixture of reason and
intuition, one it was a large part of his purpose to disentangle. But, as I men-
tioned earlier, Frege was no more happy with Dedekind’s proof. When he re-
marks that Dedekind’s proof “is hardly executed with sufficient rigour”, this
suggests to me not just that he was dissatisfied with Dedekind’s prose—he
does not make the same complaint about Dedekind’s proof that every Dede-
kind infinite set is infinite—but that he had attempted to reproduce the proof
in the concept-script and had failed.
In formalizing the proof—in attempting to make it “gapless”—Frege would
quickly have discovered the gap he could not fill, an inference upon whose
validity Dedekind was tacitly relying. In the course of this investigation, Frege
would naturally have considered the problematic inference in its general form.
And when we do that, what we find is that Dedekind needs the following:
∀n[P∗= 0n → ∃G(Mx (Gx, n))] →

∃R∀n[P∗= 0n → Mx (Rnx, n)]
Here, ‘M ’ is a third-order variable indicating relations between concepts and

objects. And the displayed formula is an axiom of countable choice for con-
cepts.
The supposition that Frege discovered the axiom of countable choice raises,
in a very powerful way, a difficulty for those who would deny him the re-
sources to discuss its truth or its epistemological status, that is, to discuss the
question whether it is a law of logic.22 Frege set out to derive the basic laws of
22 Views in this vincinity have been expressed by van Heijenoort (1967), Dreben and van
Heijenoort (1986), Ricketts (1986a; 1986b), Weiner (1990), Kemp (1995), and Goldfarb (2001),
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number within a certain formal system, second-order logic plus Basic Law V.
But Frege was not interested in formalization only for its mathematical bene-
fits. He hoped, and taught, that formalization would shed light upon philo-
sophical questions, too. Indeed, Frege is admirably clear about the relation
between formalization and epistemology:
I became aware of the need for a concept-script when I was looking for the funda-
mental principles or axioms upon which the whole of mathematics rests. Only after
this question is answered can it be hoped to trace successfully the springs of knowledge
on which this science thrives. (Frege, 1969, 362)
The epistemological status of arithmetic is not decided by formalization alone;
it is only after its axioms have been isolated that the question of arithmetic’s
epistemological status becomes tractable. But then, if logicism is not estab-
lished by a “reduction” of arithmetic to the formal system of Grundgesetze, or
any other formal system, it simply must be an intelligible question whether
the axioms of that system are logical laws. What other question could remain
at that point?
This argument concentrates upon Frege’s attitude towards the thoughts
he accepts as logical axioms. I myself regard it as conclusive, but it seems not
to have carried conviction with quite everyone.23 But a more powerful argu-
ment emerges if we concentrate upon Frege’s attitude toward a different sort
of thought, a good example of which is the axiom of countable choice. In so
far as one sets out to derive all the truths of some “branch of learning” from
a fixed set of axioms, one is immediately confronted with the possibility that
one’s axioms might not be “complete”: There may be propositions of whose
truth we had previously been convinced by informal argument that cannot be
proven within the system as it stands (Frege, 1969, 362). More interestingly,
there may be a certain kind of inference which, though commonly made, can-
not be replicated within the system. And so Frege writes:
By [resolving inferences into their simple components] we shall arrive at just a few
modes of inference, with which we must then attempt to make do at all times. And if
at some point this attempt fails, then we shall have to ask whether we have hit upon a
truth issuing from a non-logical source of cognition, whether a new mode of inference
has to be acknowledged, or whether perhaps the intended step ought not to be taken
at all. (Frege, 1969, 363)
It is of course possible that Frege is here speaking completely hypothetically.
But I suspect he is instead speaking from experience. He may have in mind
something like the version of countable choice mentioned above. As men-
tioned on page 13 above, Frege all but says in §114 that there are arithmetical
truths that are unprovable within his system as it stands, and the very claim
among others. I am in general agreement, myself, with the criticisms of such interpretations made
by Stanley (1996), Tappenden (1997), and Sullivan (2005).
23 As Sullivan (2005, §3.2) makes clear, objections to the argument tend to conflate questions
about logic with questions about particular formulations of logic.
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we have been discussing, that every infinite set is Dedekind infinite, lies just
below the surface of that discussion (Heck, 2012, §6.7).
The interest of Frege’s reflections does not depend upon the correctness
of this speculation, however, which merely serves to make vivid the problem
that concerns him: a problem about the epistemological status of principles
like the axiom of choice. Frege is saying, quite reasonably, that the question
whether the axiom of choice is true at all, and if so, whether it is a logical law,
is not only intelligible but important.
If our attempt to formalize Dedekind’s proof in the concept-script has
failed, then our first task must be to identify the apparently unprovable pro-
position whose truth that proof tacitly assumes. Once we have done this, we
will, according to Frege, have three options. First, we may reject the propos-
ition in question as not being true, and so reject the proof. Second, we may
accept the proposition’s truth, but regard it as a truth peculiar to some special
science, say, to a part of mathematics not reducible to logic. Third, we may ac-
cept the proposition as a truth of logic. The presence of the first option shows
that Frege did not regard himself merely as formalizing accepted mathemat-
ical practice: His project had, in his own view, potentially revisionary con-
sequences. The presence of the other two options show that Frege regarded it
as an intelligible question whether (say) the axiom of countable choice, assum-
ing it is a truth, is a truth of logic. I thus regard it as demonstrable that Frege
believed the question whether a given truth is a truth of logic to be intelligible.
1.7 CONCLUSION
George Boolos once wrote:
Perhaps the saddest effect of Russell’s paradox was to obscure from Frege and us the
value of Frege’s most important work. Frege stands to us as Kant stood to Frege’s con-
temporaries. The Basic Laws of Arithmetic was his magnum opus. Are you sure there’s
nothing of interest in those parts of the Basic Laws that aren’t in prose?
(Boolos, 1998a, 201)
I heard Boolos read those words in 1987, when he delivered ‘The Consistency
of Frege’s Foundations of Arithmetic’ in Oxford. As I recounted at the begin-
ning of this chapter, Boolos would ask me essentially the same question four
years later, and that time I was actually listening. It should be clear from the
foregoing what my answer was to be.
REFERENCES
Boolos, George (1998a). ‘The Consistency of Frege’s Foundations of Arith-
metic’, in Boolos (1998c), pages 183–202.
Boolos, George (1998b). ‘On the Proof of Frege’s Theorem’, in Boolos (1998c),
pages 275–91.
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Boolos, George (1998c). Logic, Logic, and Logic, ed. Richard Jeffrey. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Boolos, George and Richard Kimberly Heck (2011). ‘Die Grundlagen der
Arithmetik §§82–83’, in Frege’s Theorem. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 69–87.
(Orig. publ. under the name “Richard G. Heck, Jr”.)
Burgess, John P. (1984). ‘Review of Frege’s Conception of Numbers as Objects’,
Philosophical Review 93:638–40.
Dedekind, Richard (1902). ‘The Nature and Meaning of Numbers’, trans.
Wooster W. Beman, in Essays on the Theory of Numbers. Chicago: Open
Court, pages 31–115.
Dreben, Burton and Jean van Heijenoort (1986). ‘Introductory Note to
1929, 1930, and 1930a’, in Solomon Feferman, John W. Dawson, Jr,
Stephen Kleene, Gregory H. Moore, Robert M. Solovay, and Jean van
Heijenoort (eds.), Kurt Gödel: Collected Works, volume 1, third edition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, pages 44–59.
Dummett, Michael (1991). Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Frege, Gottlob (1879). Begriffsschrift: Eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete
Formelsprache des reinen Denkens. Halle a. d. Saale: L. Nebert. Trans. Stefan
Bauer-Mengelberg as ‘Begriffsschrift: A Formula Language Modeled upon
that of Arithmetic, for Pure Thought’, in Jean van Heijenoort (ed.), From
Frege to Gödel: A Sourcebook in Mathematical Logic 1879–1931. Cam-
bridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, pages 5–82.
Frege, Gottlob (1884). Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Eine logisch mathema-
tische Untersuchung über den Begriff der Zahl. Breslau: Wilhelm Koebner.
Trans. The Foundations of Arithmetic, second, revised edition, trans. J. L.
Austin. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1953.
Frege, Gottlob (1892). ‘Georg Cantor, Zur Lehre vom Transfiniten’, Zeit-
schrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 100:269–72. Trans. by Hans
Kaal as ‘Review of Georg Cantor, Zur Lehre vom Transfiniten’, in Frege
(1984), pages 178–81.
Frege, Gottlob (1893/1903). Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. Band I und II.
Jena: Hermann Pohle. Trans. Frege (2013).
Frege, Gottlob (1969). ‘On Mr. Peano’s Conceptual Notation and My Own’,
trans. V. H. Dudman, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 47:1–14. Reprin-
ted in Frege (1984), 234–48.
Frege, Gottlob (1980). Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence. Trans.
Hans Kaal; Ed. Gottfried Gabriel, Hans Hermes, Friedrich Kambartel,
Christian Thiel, Albert Veraart, and Brian McGuinness. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press.
Frege, Gottlob (1984). Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy.
Ed. Brian McGuinness. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Frege, Gottlob (2013). Basic Laws of Arithmetic. Derived Using Concept-Script.
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Volumes I and II. Ed. and trans. Philip A. Ebert and Marcus Rossberg.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Geach, Peter T. (1955). ‘Class and Concept’, Philosophical Review 64:561–
70.
Goldfarb, Warren (2001). ‘Frege’s Conception of Logic’, in Juliet Floyd and
Sanford Shieh (eds.), Future Pasts: The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth-
Century Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, pages 25–41.
Green, J. J., Marcus Rossberg, and Philip A. Ebert (2015). ‘The Convenience
of the Typesetter: Notation and Typography in Frege’s Grundgesetze der
Arithmetik’, Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 21:15–30.
Hazen, Allen (1985). ‘Review of Crispin Wright, Frege’s Conception of Num-
bers as Objects’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 63:251–4.
Heck, Richard Kimberly (2011). ‘Ramified Frege Arithmetic’, Journal of
Philosophical Logic 40:715–35. (Orig. publ. under the name “Richard G.
Heck, Jr”.)
Heck, Richard Kimberly (2012). Reading Frege’s Grundgesetze. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press. (Orig. publ. under the name “Richard G. Heck, Jr”.)
Heck, Richard Kimberly (2019). ‘Formal Arithmetic Before Grundgesetze’,
in this volume.
Kemp, Gary (1995). ‘Truth in Frege’s “Law of Truth”’, Synthese 105:31–51.
May, Robert C. and Kai F. Wehmeier (2019). ‘The Proof of Hume’s Prin-
ciple’, in this volume.
Parsons, Charles (1965). ‘Frege’s Theory of Number’, in Max Black (ed.),
Philosophy in America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pages 180–203.
Reprinted in William Demopoulos (ed.), Frege’s Philosophy of Mathematics.
Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995, pages 182–210.
Ricketts, Thomas G. (1986a). ‘Generality, Sense, and Meaning in Frege’, Pa-
cific Philosophical Quarterly 67:172–95.
Ricketts, Thomas G. (1986b). ‘Objectivity and Objecthood: Frege’s Meta-
physics of Judgement’, in Leila Haaparanta and Jaakko Hintikka (eds.),
Frege Synthesized: Essays on the Philosophical and Foundational Work of
Gottlob Frege. Dordrecht: Reidel, pages 65–95.
Stanley, Jason (1996). ‘Truth and Metatheory in Frege’, Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly 77:45–70.
Sullivan, Peter M. (2005). ‘Metaperspectives and Internalism in Frege’, in
Michael Beaney and Erich H. Reck (eds.), Gottlob Frege: Critical Assess-
ments of Leading Philosophers, volume II. London: Routledge, pages 85–
105.
Sundholm, Göran (2001). ‘Frege, August Bebel, and the Return of Alsace-
Lorraine: The Dating of the Distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung’,
History and Philosophy of Logic 22:57–73.
Tappenden, Jamie (1997). ‘Metatheory and Mathematical Practice in Frege’,
Philosophical Topics 25:213–64.
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Tappenden, Jamie (2000). ‘Frege on Axioms, Indirect Proof, and Independ-

ence Arguments in Geometry: Did Frege Reject Independence Argu-
ments?’, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 41:271–315.
van Heijenoort, Jean (1967). ‘Logic as Calculus and Logic as Language’, Syn-
these 17:324–30.
Weiner, Joan (1990). Frege in Perspective. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wright, Crispin (1983). Frege’s Conception of Numbers as Objects. Aberdeen:
Aberdeen University Press.
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2
Axioms in Frege
Patricia A. Blanchette
As is generally well appreciated, Frege’s conception of axioms is an old-fash-

ioned one, a conception according to which each axiom is a determinate non-
linguistic proposition, one with a fixed subject-matter, and with respect to
which the notion of a “model” or an “interpretation” makes no sense. As
contrasted with the fruitful modern conception of mathematical axioms as
collectively providing implicit definitions of structure-types, a conception on
which the range of models of a set of axioms is of the essence of those axioms’
significance, Frege’s view is a dinosaur.
It is the purpose of this essay to investigate some of the philosophically-
important aspects of that dinosaur, in order to shed light on Frege’s under-
standing of the foundational role of axioms, and on some of the ways in which
our current conception of such axiomatic virtues as independence and categor-
icity have (and in some cases have not) been informed by a move away from
Frege’s understanding of the foundational role of axioms.
2.1 CONSISTENCY AND INDEPENDENCE OF AXIOMS
2.1.1 Conceptual Analysis and Logical Entailment

We begin with a brief excursion into Frege’s views about the connection be-
tween conceptual analysis and proof in arithmetic. Early in Grundlagen, Frege
explains the project of that book as follows:
… the fundamental propositions of arithmetic should be proved, if in any way possible,
with the utmost rigor; for only if every gap in the chain of deductions is eliminated
with the greatest care can we say with certainty upon what primitive truths the proof
depends …
Overlapping parts of the material in this chapter have been presented to audiences at the Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam, at the Logicism Today conference in Besse-en-Chandesse, at the Univer-
sity of Bucharest, at UC Irvine, and at NYU. Many thanks to the organizers of these conferences,
and to audience members for helpful feedback. Thanks also to Philip Ebert, Marcus Rossberg,
and two anonymous referees for helpful remarks on an earlier draft.
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32 Patricia A. Blanchette
If we now try to meet this demand, we very soon come to propositions which
cannot be proved so long as we do not succeed in analyzing concepts which occur in them
into simpler concepts or in reducing them to something of greater generality. Now here it is
above all Number which has to be either defined or recognized as indefinable. This is
the point which the present work is meant to settle. On the outcome of this task will
depend the decision as to the nature of the laws of arithmetic.
(Grundlagen §4, emphasis added)
The basic idea here is a familiar one: truths expressed using terms such as
‘prime number’ or ‘continuous function’ can often only be proved once the
relevant notions have been broken down into complexes of simpler ones, so
that the truths themselves are expressed by sentences whose terms stand for
the relative simples, and whose syntactic complexity is greater than that of the
original sentences. Frege’s idea is that his analysis and clarification of such fun-
damental concepts as that of cardinal number, en route to the proof of claims
about cardinal numbers, is of a piece with standard instances of conceptual
clarification in the history of mathematics:
[I]n mathematics a mere moral conviction, supported by a mass of successful applica-
tions, is not good enough. Proof is now demanded of many things that formerly passed
as self-evident. Again and again the limits to the validity of a proposition have been
in this way established for the first time. The concepts of function, of continuity, of
limit and of infinity have been shown to stand in need of sharper definition. Negative
and irrational numbers, which had long since been admitted into science, have had to
submit to a closer scrutiny of their credentials.
In all directions these same ideals can be seen at work—rigor of proof, precise
delimitation of extent of validity, and as a means to this, sharp definition of concepts.
§2. Proceeding along these lines, we are bound eventually to come to the concept
of Number and to the simplest propositions holding of positive whole numbers, which
form the foundation of the whole of mathematics. (Grundlagen §§1–2)
The idea of conceptual analysis as an essential preliminary to proof is main-

tained throughout Frege’s work. In the 1914 Logic in Mathematics manuscript,
we find a similar sentiment:
In the development of science it can indeed happen that one has used a word, a sign,
an expression, over a long period under the impression that its sense is simple until one
succeeds in analysing it into simpler logical constituents. By means of such an analysis,
we may hope to reduce the number of axioms; for it may not be possible to prove a
truth containing a complex constituent so long as that constituent remains unanalysed;
but it may be possible, given an analysis, to prove it from truths in which the elements
of the analysis occur. (Frege, 1914 (1983, 226; 1979, 209))
The general picture painted here, and the pattern Frege follows in Grundlagen
and Grundgesetze, is as follows:
(a) We begin with a thought expressed in a relatively-unanalyzed way, e.g.,
via a sentence of ordinary arithmetic.
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Another random document with
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shaping, and they were well pleased when I taught some of
them, as a reward, to make a serviceable kind of lace with
the needle. The maids learned to read, and some of them to
write, and to reckon in their heads.
By and by we had a boy's school taught by a young man

sent us by my lord. It was not so well attended as the other,
for the farmers and fishers were not willing to spare their
lads after they were old enough to be useful, but yet we
turned out some good scholars. My husband was a musician
like all the Corbets, and the school master was also a
singer. So we had some good music in the church.
On the whole, it was a happy time. I will not deny that I

was now and then homesick, especially when three or four
times a year I had a packet from Holland. Avice was usually
the writer, and a capital correspondent she was, telling me
all the news of our old neighbors, and every thing that
happened in the family. Garrett Van Alstine wrote to my
husband and told him what was going on in church and
State, and 'twas plain to see that he was by no means easy
in his mind.
The emperor had, indeed, not abdicated in favor of his son,

but he was always talking of it, and, as he grew older, and
more feeble in mind and body, he came more and more
under the influence of the priests. There were restrictions
placed upon the printing and sale of Protestant books, and
threatening rumors as to the breaking up of Protestant
congregations. Avice wrote that their neighbors of the old
church, with whom they had over lived in friendship and
harmony, began to look coldly on them and to withdraw
from their intimacy, and that Margaret Hall's school at
Amsterdam had been almost broken up. On the whole, we
wore not sorry that we had returned to England, where,
though matters of state were somewhat unsettled, we had
no fear of persecution for the truth's sake.
It was in the year 1551, that I had a great and agreeable

surprise. I remember I was busy making cakes and comfits,
for we were to have a school treat the next day, and I had
been concerting some famous Christmas cakes after our old
Dutch receipt, and fashioning them in the shape of animals
and birds, as the manner is over there, for a surprise to the
young ones. I had just taken the last batch from the oven
when a man-servant in my Lord Stanton's livery rode to the
door, and delivered a note for my husband. Presently Walter
came into the kitchen, when I was putting the last touches
to my cakes.
"Here is news, dear heart," said he. "My lord and lady are at
the Manor House, and would have us repair thither at once.
He says that, being in Biddeford, he found there a package
of great value, consigned to us from Holland, and which he
must deliver into our own hands."
"Dear me!" said I, rather vexed, for I had enough to do.

"Why can not you go by yourself? No wonder Dame Duncan
says you are a woman-led priest, when you can not so
much as go to the Hall without me at your elbow!"
Walter only stood smiling at me. He knew it was only a spirt

of temper, such as all cooks have a right to. I made him
burn his mouth with a hot cake, and then I got ready and
went with him to the Hall, leaving Mary Thornton to finish
the work.
We found my lady with her two young babes, she having

brought them over by the advice of Master Ellenwood, who
thought they would be better for the more bracing air, as
they had trouble with their teeth. (Master Ellenwood was
bred a doctor in Amsterdam, and had established himself in
a good practice at Biddeford. He was not seldom our guest,
and always a welcome one.)
"So you have come for your packet!" said my lady. "But,
dear Mistress Corbet, I know not about delivering it. Truth
to tell, I am enamored of it, and know not how to let it go
out of my hands."
I saw my lady was jesting with us; but sober Walter, who
could understand every thing but a joke, answered gravely
that he was sure I would be glad to proffer to her ladyship
any thing worthy of her acceptance.
"I am not so sure of that!" answered the lady, merrily.

"Suppose now it were a parrot, or marmoset, or a fine cat
from the Indies, such as you once told me of!"
"You are welcome to all my share in parrot and marmoset,

and as to the cat, I am not so sure, but, at least, I will
promise you a kitten!" said I. "Cats are my weak point, as
you know, my lady."
"Ah, well! So I must even give my pet into your hands. But
remember you have promised me a kitten."
There was a little cabinet in the withdrawing-room, having a

curtain hung over the door, and as I sat, I had seen this
curtain shake more than once. Now, as my lady blew her
little silver whistle, it parted, and in the opening appeared a
child's head, with flaxen hair and large serious blue eyes.
"Katherine! 'Tis our own little Katherine!" I exclaimed, while

Walter stared in amazement. I had her in my arms in a
moment, while my lady looked on smiling.
"Did I not tell you 'twas a precious treasure," she asked
when our rapture had a little subsided. "And have I not
played the honest merchant with you?"
"Precious, indeed!" said I. "But I am all amazed! How did it

happen?"
"Nay I do not understand the matter well enough to tell

you," answered my lady. "But no doubt our marmoset can
give a good account of herself, so I will leave you together
till dinner, for you must dine with us."
I began to say something about preparing for the school

feast, but my lady cut me short.
"Never mind the feast. I have brought over comfits and gilt
gingerbread enough to satisfy every child in Coombe
Ashton, not to mention ribbons and scissors and all sorts of
prizes. Do you stay and dine here, and to-morrow we will all
attend the school feast."
So we were fain to sit down, and taking the darling between

us, to hear all she had to say. She was grown a little, but
not changed in her looks, which were her mother's over
again, and she had the same sweet serious way with her.
The story, disentangled from all our questions and remarks,

was this:
Arthur and Katherine had begun to find their position in

Middleburg both uneasy and insecure. Their congregation,
always small, had been almost broken up by deaths and
removals, and they were doubting which way to turn next,
when Arthur received a call from an English colony in Wesel,
one of the German towns belonging to the famous Hanse
League. They had gathered together a congregation, but
had not yet found a pastor, when some one from
Amsterdam who knew Arthur told them of him.
The call was too clearly Providential not to be heeded.

Katherine's oldest boy had already been placed with Garrett
Van Alstine to be made a merchant of, and an opportunity
occurring to send Katherine directly to Biddeford in the care
of a merchant well-known to my uncle and cousin, they had
taken advantage thereof, wishing, as Arthur wrote, to know
that at least one of their children was in security. Little did
they or we know of the storm that was about to burst upon
England.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE GREAT STORM.
WELL, the school feast was held with great success, and
was all the more enjoyed that we had my lady with us, for
she was one of those who carry sunshine wherever they go.
Our little Kate was taken to the arms and heart of the
parish at once, and many were the "dear souls" and "tender
lambs" bestowed upon her by the warm-hearted Devon
women, and much the wonder that coming from outlandish
parts she should speak English as well as any body. Poor
Kate found it a good deal easier to make herself understood
than to understand, for the Devon dialect is almost as
different from that of London as the Dutch tongue itself. But
she was a cheerful, brave little maid, always disposed to
make the best of every thing and every body, and though
scandalized at the sluttery of the housekeeping, and a little
scared at the cliffs and the hills (having never in her life
seen any thing higher than a church steeple), yet she soon
made herself at home, and was a wonderful help and
comfort to me. The children worshiped her as though she
had come direct from Heaven, and if the good dames did
not spoil her digestion with clotted cream and honey-cakes,
and her mind with flattery, 'twas more owing to her
discretion than theirs.
We passed two more happy years in our quiet country home

—happier years I am sure no one ever spent any where. We
had, 'tis true, one great grief in the death of a dear little
maid, who was sent to stay with us three months, and then
taken back to her home in the skies. 'Twas a grievous loss,
but yet I took great comfort in the babe, even after I had
seen the dear little body laid away under the daisies in our
pretty, green churchyard. I felt that she had been given to
me—yea, given and not lent—and that she would always be
mine, though we were separated for a season. 'Twas a
sweet thought that one more blessed spirit was resting in
Jesus, and that it was my child; and I was able to take
comfort in it, even when I was folding the clothes she had
not worn out, and putting away the cradle she would never
need. The dear Father comforted me as one whom his
mother comforteth, and I know the meaning of His precious
promises better by far than I had ever done before.
It was in the spring of 1563 that Walter was summoned to

London, on business. That same distant relation of Sir
Edward Peckham's who had inherited his property was
dead, and had left Walter a considerable legacy, which his
son was ready to pay over. Besides there were some
difficulties about the estate which Walter's testimony might
help to settle, and Sir John was anxious to have him come
at once to London. He was considerate enough to send a
sum of money for expenses, and a couple of stout, well-
mounted serving men for attendants on the road.
Somehow, the whole scheme of the journey was distasteful

to me—not for any reason that I could give, but because of
a feeling I had that trouble would come of it; and I would
willingly have foregone the money to remain quietly and
safely at home. My husband, on the contrary, was delighted
with the prospect of seeing London once more, and mixing
with the world of scholars and reformers. It was no more
than natural, I am sure. He was, a born scholar and divine,
and he had been for a long time buried where he had little
or no society of his own kind.
"But you will go with me," he said, as we were talking it

over. "I must have you with me."
"A fine showing that you can not go up to London without

your wife," said I, though my heart did give a great leap at
the thought of seeing my old friends again.
True, the Davis family no longer lived in London, having

returned to the country, but my dear mistress lived there.
The Duke of Suffolk had been dead some years, and her
Grace was married again to a Mr. Batie, a gentleman of
somewhat obscure family, but an admirable scholar and a
very excellent man. It did seem strange to me that her
Grace should take a second partner, but I do think her
attachment to the Duke was rather that of an affectionate
daughter to an indulgent father, than that of a wife to her
husband. He had, as it were, brought her up, and he had
married her very young, and before her heart had time to
open. Never was happier wife, I am sure; but still I do not
think the Duke ever was to her what Mr. Batie was, or what
my good man was to me.
Besides my desire to see London, I could not but feel that

Walter would be the better of me at his elbow. A wife may
reverence her husband according to the Scripture, as I am
sure I have ever done by mine, and yet be conscious of his
little infirmities. I knew Walter would not be so likely to
spend half his legacy in old manuscripts and new books,
and the rest in buying finery for Katherine and myself, if I
were at hand, nor would he forget half his engagements
and remember the other half wrong if he had me to look
over the pocket-book where he carefully set them down,
and which he never looked at afterward.
The great difficulty seemed to be how to dispose of

Katherine. I did not like to leave her with Mary Thornton,
whose temper did not mend with age, and who was always
a little disposed to be jealous of the child. Any of the
farmers' dames about would have been glad of her; but
there were objections to that plan also. Just in the nick of
time, however, my lady came forward and claimed
Katherine for her own while we should be away. Kate would
be invaluable to her, she was pleased to say, as a
companion to herself and a teacher to the elder little girl. I
knew my lady well enough to know that while she would be
kind to the child, she would not spoil her, and so it was
agreed that Katherine should stay at Stanton Court during
our absence. Little did we think how long that absence was
like to be, or how many things were to happen before we
saw the dear maiden again.
At last, the day of departure came, and we set out, taking

Stanton Court in our way, and leaving Katherine in her new
home. My lady had given me a good horse for my own
riding, an arrangement far more pleasant to me than being
trussed up on a pillion. The two servants Sir John Peckham
sent were staid, sober, middle-aged serving men, real old
fashioned blue-coats, such as they tell me are going out of
vogue now-a-days, when gentlemen must have their
grooms, their footmen, pages and what not.
The time was just past the middle of June. The weather was
lovely and the roads as good as they ever are in England.
We did not hurry, but traveled in the cool mornings and
afternoons, stopping in the heat of the day at some country
inn, or in some little town, two or three times with old
friends of my husband's settled in quiet country rectories. It
was at one of these last named places that we heard a
rumor of the young king's rapidly declining health.
"Heaven help us!" said my husband. "What will become of

this land if he dies?"
"There may be better days in store for England than she

hath ever yet seen!" answered our host, who was a
dignified clergyman. "My brother, from whom I have most of
my news, tells me that there is a prospect of the Lady Jane
Grey succeeding to the throne. She is, as every one says, a
young lady of excellent parts and sweet disposition, and
loyal to the reformed faith to the bottom of her heart."
My husband shook his head. "That may all be, but I do not
believe she will ever wear the crown. King Edward's will,
whatever it may be—and I fancy no one knows that—will
never set aside his father's. Poor Lady Jane and her
husband are but puppets in the hands of their ambitious
relations."
"Ay, and unwilling puppets, some say," answered our host.

"Mine excellent friend, Master Roger Ascham, tells me that
her liking is all for retirement and study, and that she would
rather read a dialogue of Plato or a chapter in the Hebrew
Scriptures than join in any gay pastime whatever."
"Alas, poor young lady!" said I. "And of what like is her

husband?"
"A gracious youth enow, but not over and above wise,
unless he be belied," answered the archdeacon.
"Nevertheless, they are a most loving couple. But I can not
but fear lest great trouble should arise. Perhaps a war of
the succession, like those which have heretofore distracted
this poor kingdom. I know well enough what will happen to
you and me and our likes, Brother Corbet, if the Lady Mary
come to the throne—and that will be to have our beards
singed an' we do not make up our minds to conform!"
"Think you so?" said my husband. "Then will there be many

singed beards in England."
"Ay, but not so great a number as you think. I do believe

more than half of those who have used the books of
Common Prayer in this reign will burn them in the next,
should it be their interest to do so. They are Papists at
heart, and do but wait the occasion to throw off the mask!"
"Nay, I think you are uncharitable," said my husband.
"May be so. Mind, I say not all. There is old Latimer; he is

of your kind, and would be burned by inch pieces before he
would do such a baseness; and there are others like him."
"And the Archbishop?"
"I am not so very sure of the Archbishop," said our host,

slowly. "He is a man who greatly fears the wrath of the
king. I did never like his sending away his lawful wife to
Holland so readily, because his late majesty took up against
the married clergy. Courtiers are not the stuff to make
martyrs. Nevertheless, if driven to the wall, he might die as
bravely as another."
The next day we met the news of the king's death. (He had
been dead two or three days, but they about him concealed
the matter as long as they could for the better furtherance
of their plans.) In one town we passed through they had
already proclaimed Queen Jane, and the mob were rejoicing
after their senseless fashion, glad of any event, good or
bad, which gave them the chance of eating and drinking.
But I could not but observe many sullen and discontented

faces, and in one village we passed through we were hooted
with, "Shame on the married priest. Go on with thy leman,
false priest, and see what awaits thee!"
I must say my courage failed, and I prayed my husband to

turn back, or at least seek some safe shelter till we should
know how matters would turn. But Walter believed that his
duty called him to go on, and when he began to talk about
duty, I knew he had taken the bit between his teeth, and I
might as well be silent; so I went forward, but with a heavy
heart, and all the more because I had heard from the
serving men, that their master was a devoted adherent of
Queen Jane. I need not, however, have minded that. The
Peckhams in general have a wonderful knack of turning up
on the winning side just at the right moment. My old friend,
Sir Edward, was an exception to the rule; one always knew
where to find him—but in general they were a timeserving
race, I must say.
Well, we reached London at last, and went to a decent

hostel close by Sir John's town residence. I thought he
might have asked us to his house, seeing we had come all
that way on his errand, but he did not; and as it turned out,
it was just as well. All was in utter confusion at this time,
for Queen Mary had been proclaimed in Norwich, and
people were flocking to her standard every day. The Popish
party raised their heads more and more, and I was fain to
keep close within doors, for I could not go out with my
husband without being insulted; I did not even go to see my
old mistress though my heart yearned toward her, finding
myself so near. Walter would fain have finished the business
that had brought him hither, but Sir John kept putting him
off and putting him off, and he could hardly gain an
audience.
So matters dragged along with us till the nineteenth of July,

when the Queen Mary was proclaimed in Cheapside by
some of the very men who had been most forward in the
cause of poor Lady Jane. They did not save their own necks
by their baseness, that is one comfort. It was the very day
after this proclamation that Sir John sent for my husband. I
went with him, understanding from the messenger that he
desired to see me also, but this it seems was a mistake.
Nevertheless, I was glad I did, as it turned out. When we
entered his presence, Sir John was sitting in his great chair,
and near him was one whom I knew I had seen before,
though I could not tell where, but he seemed to bring my
old life at Peckham Hall before me in a moment. Sir John
made my husband a slight salutation, and me none at all.
His lady was even less civil, for she turned away from me
and exchanged a marked look of contempt and disgust with
the priest.
"I have sent for you, Master Corbet, to tell you that I have
no more need of your services," said Sir John, curtly. "This
worthy priest, Father Barnaby, has given me all the
information I need as to the matter of the legacy. I will
attend to it. Father Simon is of opinion that my respected
father was weak in mind when he made his will, and
therefore it will not stand in law, but we will see—we will
see," he added pompously. "You shall have justice done. But
who is this woman you have brought with you?" he added,
as though just then aware of my presence. "Your sister?"
"My lawful and beloved wife, Sir John, as you very well
know," answered Walter, firmly, "whom I brought up to
London at your own written request, as thinking her early
recollections might throw some light on the matter in
hand."
Sir John did look a little confused, but Father Simon took up
the cudgels for him. I knew all about him the moment I
heard his name called.
"Your wife. I thought you were a priest. What do you with a

wife?"
"The same as did St. Peter," answered Walter. "Take her

with me on my journeys."
"Blasphemy!" exclaimed my lady, with a shudder.
"And you, mistress—do I understand that you have the

effrontery to call yourself a married woman, after having
been the professed spouse of Christ?"
"An apostate nun. Worse and worse," said my lady.

"Apostate I can not be, since I never was professed, as you,
Sir Priest, very well know," said I. "As to the rest I am
proud to call myself Walter Corbet's wife, and the mother of
his child."
"You are—" said the priest, and he called me by a vile name

I will not write here.
Walter resembled some other very good-tempered people.

He was like one of our long-horned Devon bulls, very quiet
and even stolid to a certain point of provocation, after which
it were best to get out of the way.
He walked up to Father Simon, and with one sound cuff sent

him sprawling and tumbling over my lady's embroidery
frame and into a basket holding a slut and a litter of
puppies. It was an ill-judged blow; I do not justify him in it,
and it had terrible consequences for us. The offended
mother-dog seized Father Barnaby by the ear and bit him
furiously, the pups meantime all yelling in concert—the lady
squalled and Sir John swore, while a crowd of serving men
rushing into the room, added to the confusion. How it all
came about, I hardly know myself, but I presently found
myself lying on the street, outside the door, my head
supported on the lap of a poor woman, who was fanning me
with her apron.
"What has happened?" said I, starting up. "Where is my

husband?"
"Hush, hush, poor thing! They will not let you go after him,"
said the woman, and with that she fell a-weeping. "They
have taken him to prison, and serve him right for a fool,"
said a queer, cracked voice beside me. "Only he does not
know enough to let his folly make him a living, I would even
give him my cap and bauble."
I looked up and saw a man in the garb of a fool, or jester,
whom I had before remarked, in Sir John's presence
chamber.
"Good fool," said I, "tell me what they have done with my

husband."
"Nay, how can I tell; I am but a fool," he answered, tossing

up his bauble and catching it with many extravagant
gestures; "but fool as I am, I know you should not sit here."
"Harry speaks truth, madam, this is no place for you," said

one of the serving men who had come up with us from
Devon. He helped me to my feet, and whispered in my ear:
"Go you to your lodging, and so soon as I can, I will bring
you news of your husband. This woman, who is mine own
sister, will conduct you thither."
There was no other counsel, so I went. Once alone, I sat

down and strove to collect my scattered thoughts. Walter
had been carried to prison—that I was sure of—but where
and how long was he like to stay there? I remembered all I
had heard of Father Simon's relentless character, and I felt
that Walter's chance was a slender one.
"Oh, had I but staid at home," was my thought. "Had we

but kept quiet in Devon."
It seemed to me as though he had been purposely

entrapped, but in that I believe I did Sir John injustice. It
was no pre-conceived plan. Sir John had been for Queen
Jane, when that unhappy lady seemed like to succeed, and
now that she was overthrown, he was willing to save
himself and cover up his transgression by any means in his
favor.
Oh, what a distracted creature I was. I walked up and down
till I was tired and then threw myself on the floor to walk
again as my goading thoughts and fears would not let me
be still. At last tears came to my relief and I could pray.
It was dark when Ned Harris rapped at my door,

accompanied by his sister, the old woman who had first
taken pity on me.
"Well, madam, I bring you but cold comfort," said he

bluntly. "Your husband is in Newgate prison, and in evil case
—so I hear from Harry, who learned the same from Sir
John. Have you any friends in this place?"
"None that I can go to unless it be mine old mistress, the

Dowager Duchess of Suffolk," I answered, "and I know not
even where she lives or whether she is in town."
"That we will find out. Meantime, you were best leave this
place at once. My good sister here hath a lodging house,
though a humble one, which she owes to her Grace's
goodness, and she will give you a shelter for the present."
"That I will, that I will, dear madam," said Dame Giles. "You
don't remember me, and no wonder, but I mind you well, as
you used to go on the water with her Grace. Yes, and you
was once at my place to ask after the poor, foreign
gentleman her Grace sent to lodge with me."
"But shall I not bring trouble upon you, good dame?" I

asked.
"Never fear, madam. I fancy I am too small game for them

at present. Do you come with me and I will make you as
comfortable as my poor house will allow."
"I care not for comfort, so I may be near my husband," I
answered. "Oh, Harris, do but get me news of him, and I
will bless you forever."
"I will do what I can, but it will be no easy matter," said

Harris. "Have you money, madam, wherewith to discharge
your score?"
"It is paid," I answered. "My husband settled it this

morning."
"That is well. Then the sooner we are gone the better."
It was not long before I found myself in a small but clean

little waterside inn, frequented, as it seemed by the better
class of sailors. My room, though plain, was decent and
retired, and I never left it.
It was three or four days before Harris got news of my

husband, and bad news it was, when it came. Walter had
been committed to Newgate, among the common rabble of
rebels, and upon some trumped-up charge of rebellion. I
asked if there were any chance of my seeing him.
"I fear not," answered Harris, shaking his head. "And,

mistress, I would not have you seen in the street. My
master and yonder black priest—Heaven's malison on him
and his like!—have made strict inquiry after you, and you
would fare ill, did you once get into his hands. Have you
ne'er a friend to whom you can turn?"
"I know of none unless it be my old mistress, the Dowager

Duchess of Suffolk," I answered, "as I told you before."
"Alas, poor lady, she is like enow to be in evil ease herself.

The Suffolk family are in bad odor. You were best make your
way down to the west as soon as maybe. Have you
money?"
"Yes," I answered, "but I can not leave town so long as my

husband's fate is in suspense. How can I?"
"'Tis a piteous case, mistress. I would I knew how to help

you, for you have been mortal kind to me. Ah, well. Bide
you still where you are, and we will see what can be done."
I don't think I realized mine own condition or danger at all.

I thought only of one thing—to see my husband once more,
and aid in his escape if possible. I lay awake all night, and
in the very first gray of the dawn, I stole out and found my
way to the prison. I would at any rate see the walls which
held my love. When I arrived under those frowning wails, I
found two or three other women on the same errand as
myself. As I gazed at the barred windows, the desire to see
my husband's face once more overmastered every other
consideration, and I began to sing a Dutch psalm, which we
had used in our church at Amsterdam. The other women
looked at me with surprise and pity in their faces.
"Poor thing, she is outlandish, too," said one, forgetting for

the moment her trouble in mine. "Is it your husband you
seek, dame?"
It went to my heart to refuse her sympathy, but I only

pressed her hand, and shook my head in token that I did
not understand. I ventured another verse of the psalm. Oh,
joy! Walter's face appeared for a moment at a grated
casement—pale, but serene as ever. I could not suppress a
cry.
"Ah, poor thing, she sees her goodman," said the kind
woman who had spoken before.
"Wait," said Walter, and his face disappeared. Presently he
came to the casement again, and threw something which
fell at my feet. It was a paper wrapped round a stone, and I
quickly picked it up and hid it in my bosom. I was not a
minute too soon, for at that moment a wicket was opened
and a surly voice bade us begone for a pack of idle jades.
As the man spoke, a little maid of three or four summers,
slipped under his arm and ran toddling into the middle of
the street. I saw what was coming, and sprang after her. A
troop of horsemen were galloping recklessly down the
street. I snatched her out of the way just in time, and threw
her, as I may say, to her father, falling myself so near the
horses that one of them stepped on and tore my gown. I
was stunned and shaken with the force of my fall and could
not rise for the moment. As I did so the turnkey, for such he
was, came to my assistance.
"'Twas a brave deed, and you are a brave wench," said he.
"Come in now and rest. You have saved my child from those
brutes who would ride over a living babe as soon as a dead
cat. Come in, come in, and my dame shall get you a cool
draught."
So there was a heart at any rate under that bulldog face. I

was only too glad to obey, for I trembled so I could hardly
stand. The man set me a stool, and the wife, finding her
child was not hurt, bestirred herself to get me some
refreshment. Meantime I implored the turnkey to let me see
my husband, were it but for one moment.
"Who is your husband?" he asked.
I told him.
"I dare not," said he gruffly. "'Twere as much as my life is

worth."
I fell a-weeping with that, for almost the first time since I
parted from Walter.
The turnkey's wife pitied and poor-deared me, and then

whispered eagerly in her husband's ear. He shook his head
at first, but seemed at last to relent.
"I would I were not a fool," said he, gruffly. "After all, you
risked your life in the midst of your own trouble to save the
little wench who was naught to you—well, come along—I
will give you five minutes, but I must be within hearing—
come along."
I did not say a word for fear he might change his mind, but
followed him through grim passages till he came to a door
which he unlocked with a clash of keys which seemed to
hurt my ears.
"Here, Master Parson, here is some one to speak to you;

but be short. Come, you here."
I gathered together my scattered senses, and held them, as

it were, tightly with both hands. I saw, as a dream, figures
lying stretched out or walking listlessly to and fro. I saw one
disengage himself from the crowd and come toward me,
and in a moment I was in my husband's arms.
"But what is this?" said he, touching my forehead, which

had been cut and bruised by the fall.
"Nothing," said I, hastily. "Waste no time on me. Tell me

what I can do for you."
"Naught in the world, dear heart, but pray for me and take
care of yourself. Come not here again—they will set a trap
for you. Go to her Grace of Suffolk. She will shelter you for
old sake's sake, and her husband is a wise gentleman, and

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Essays on Frege’s : basic laws of

arithmetic First Edition. Edition Ebert

Frege on Language, Logic, and Psychology: Selected

Laws of nature First Edition. Edition Ott

The Science of Meaning: Essays on the Metatheory of

Milton's complex words: essays on the conceptual

Frege on Language, Logic, and Psychology Eva Picardi

Essays on Coding Theory 1st Edition Blake

Business Essentials, 11th Global Edition Ronald J.

Aquinas after Frege 1st ed. Edition Giovanni

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Essays on Frege’s Basic Laws of Arithmetic

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“Essays_on_Frege_Basic_Laws_OUP_final” — 2019/7/29 — 11:29 — page iii — #3

Essays on Frege’s Basic

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1 The Basic Laws of Cardinal Number 1

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12 Frege on Creation 285

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“Essays_on_Frege_Basic_Laws_OUP_final” — 2019/7/29 — 11:29 — page ix — #9

work by Michael Dummett. Yet a broader engagement with Frege’s magnum

Philip Ebert, Stirling, Scotland

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Michael Beaney is Professor of History of Analytic Philosophy at the Hum-

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Stewart Shapiro is O’Donnell Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State Uni-

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Frege begins his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik as follows:

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2 Richard Kimberly Heck

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The Basic Laws of Cardinal Number 3

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4 Richard Kimberly Heck

1.1 THE PROOF OF HP

Here, ‘Nx : F x’ is to be read: the number of F s.

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The Basic Laws of Cardinal Number 5

7 Theorem 32, which is the right-to-left direction, reads:

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6 Richard Kimberly Heck

∃R[∀x∀y(Rxy → ∀z(Rxz → y = z)) ∧

∃R[∀x∀y(Rxy → ∀z(Rxz → y = z)) ∧

What Frege has done is group ‘∀x∀y(Rxy → ∀z(Rxz → y = z))’ and

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The Basic Laws of Cardinal Number 7

where ‘Eq(F, G)’ abbreviates: ∃R[Map(R)(F, G) ∧ Map(Conv(R))(G, F )].

x̂(F x) = x̂(Gx) ≡ ∀x(F x ≡ Gx)

1.2 THE AXIOMS OF ARITHMETIC

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8 Richard Kimberly Heck

Table 1.1. One Version of the Dedekind–Peano Axioms

His definition of predecession, which he writes as ‘mS(nSs)’, is as follows

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The Basic Laws of Cardinal Number 9

b and the F s other than c, and if b is a G and c is an F , then there is also a

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10 Richard Kimberly Heck

The concept Nξ is then definable as P∗= 0ξ . So an object is a natural number

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