Cantor extended his work on the absolute infinite by using it in a proof. Around 1895, he began to regard his well-ordering principle as a theorem and attempted to prove it. In 1899, he sent Dedekind a proof of the equivalent aleph theorem: the cardinality of every infinite set is an aleph.Moore 1982, p. 51. Proof of equivalence: If a set is well-ordered, then its cardinality is an aleph since the alephs are the cardinals of well-ordered sets. If a set's cardinality is an aleph, then it can be well-ordered since there is a one-to-one correspondence between it and the well-ordered set defining the aleph. First, he defined two types of multiplicities: consistent multiplicities (sets) and inconsistent multiplicities (absolutely infinite multiplicities). Next he assumed that the ordinals form a set, proved that this leads to a contradiction, and concluded that the ordinals form an inconsistent multiplicity. He used this inconsistent multiplicity to prove the aleph theorem.Hallett 1986, pp. 166–169. In 1932, Zermelo criticized the construction in Cantor's proof.Cantor's proof, which is a proof by contradiction, starts by assuming there is a set S whose cardinality is not an aleph. A function from the ordinals to S is constructed by successively choosing different elements of S for each ordinal. If this construction runs out of elements, then the function well-orders the set S. This implies that the cardinality of S is an aleph, contradicting the assumption about S. Therefore, the function maps all the ordinals one-to-one into S. The function's image is an inconsistent submultiplicity contained in S, so the set S is an inconsistent multiplicity, which is a contradiction. Zermelo criticized Cantor's construction: "the intuition of time is applied here to a process that goes beyond all intuition, and a fictitious entity is posited of which it is assumed that it could make successive arbitrary choices." (Hallett 1986, pp. 169–170.)
