Borges Apocryphal Quote   Is apocryphal the correct word  In Royces The World and the Individual available on Archiveorg 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 Royces it is also discussed in Russells Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy