Borges' Apocryphal Quote 

Is "apocryphal" the correct word.  In Royce's The World and the Individual, available on Archive.org, he begins a discussion (in the Supplemental Essay) as follows: "let us suppose, if you please, that a portion of the surface of England is very perfectly levelled and smoothed, and is then devoted to the production of our precise map of England. That in general, then, should be found upon the surface of England, map constructions which more or less roughly represent the whole of England, — all this has nothing puzzling about it. Any ordinary map of England spread out upon English ground would illustrate, in a way, such
possession, by a part of the surface of England, of a resemblance to the whole. But now suppose that this our resemblance is to be made absolutely exact, in the sense previously defined."  Royce goes on for awhile.

Borges may have massaged, and shortened considerably, the quote, but the idea is still Royce's (it is also discussed in Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy).

151.205.183.66