The notation that I shall use here for the logic of quantification is of the familiar kind wherein the letters ‘p’, ‘q’, etc. stand in place of unspecified statements and the letters ‘ƒ’, ‘g’, etc. stand in place of unspecified predicates. The present section will deal with the significance of this notation; the purpose and scope of the paper as a whole can better be indicated afterward, in §2.

By “predicates” I mean, not properties (or classes) and relations, but merely certain notational expressions. As a first approach they may be thought of as expressions like ‘walks,’ ‘is red,’ ‘touches,’ ‘gives to.’ Where ‘ƒ’, ‘g’, ‘h’, and ‘k’ represent these four predicates, we may read ‘ƒx’ ‘gy’, ‘hxy’, and ‘κxyz’ as ‘x walks,’ ‘y is red,’ ‘x touches y,’ ‘x gives y to z.’

The present note is conceived as a sequel to Mostowki's paper, Über die Unabhängigkeit des Wohlordnungssatzes vom Ordnungsprinzip (which will be quoted as “M.”).

In that paper Mostowski considers a system of axioms , very close to the system of axiomatic set theory of Bernays, but where the axiom of choice is not supposed to hold. Mostowski proves that the well-ordering theorem (Wohlordnungssatz) cannot be derived from the system plus the principle of simple ordering (Ordnungsprinzip).