He had applied for a situation here for the purpose of obtaining a view of the kingdoms of nature, collected and classified in one place, and if possible to read therein and discover the great connection if there was any, or the universal confusion which probably was there. His intentions soon became manifest, especially when he could no longer avoid the danger of their enticing from him, his project to classify the birds after an entirely different method than the current one. The professors, who of course did not want to be lowered to collectors of material for a young man, and were not willing to become obsolete with their works, took an instinctive aversion to the scrutinizer. The first obstacle to the intruder was made by placing him to detail work of a subordinate character which was disgusting to his sense of beauty, during six months he had to change alcohol in the fish collection; at first he was retching from the nauseating odor, but after he had overcome this disagreeable perception he turned furiously to the study of the fishes, and as he worked rapidly he had inside of the half year thoroughly studied the great material. He had been standing the whole winter in a cold, dirty and semi-dark kitchen where he had been smelling bad alcohol, frozen his hands and contracted a severe chronic cystitis.
Afterwards he was set to writing labels for the algæ. As he had received no instructions in calligraphy at the University and by nature he had a wreak, unsteady hand, all the labels were discarded and he gained the name of being useless.—He could not even write.—But in two months, during which time he attended a writing school, and in the evenings sat at home over writing book and copy, he acquired a beautiful and legible hand and at the same time gained a more complete knowledge of the algæ than he had before, while into the bargain he learned the inestimable art of penmanship. The professors who had thought he would reject such subordinate work soon saw what kind of grit he had and that he understood how to use all adversities for his benefit, increasing his knowledge while turning aside softly from the leash and warding off the blows.
His improved penmanship was to be a new source of humiliations, for he was now placed at copying office records and letters, sinking finally, as they believed, to an ordinary copyist's rôle. Without complaining he took the occupation and, at the same time learning foreign languages, he had the opportunity of glancing into the secrets of all these great men, which they thought would be worthless to him. Thus he saw the scientific questions of the period, debated through correspondence and he discovered the ways to the secret meetings of learned societies, gained knowledge about the subterranean passages to distinction, and the opportunities to make his investigations fruitful. Thus he was unassailable, and just as they believed they had crushed him he arose again.
It was owing to this double quality of nobleman and independent thinker, that he became isolated. His name did not sound scientific and his fine and modern way of dressing was taken as a proof of unscientific sense by those who remembered Berzelius' ragged pants; his patient and apparent submission was taken as inferiority, and all his meditations over science, as poetical effusions. Regretting to have let him come behind the curtain, and in order to press him down again they now placed him at another work which had been rejected by every newcomer, and was called the proving stone. There was in the garret a remnant collection of stones and minerals, which had come together partly through gifts and legacies and partly through circumnavigations and explorations, and as most of it had been discarded as duplicates, at a time when geology was in its infancy, increasing knowledge demanded that they again be overhauled and assorted. They were placed in an attic room beneath the rooftiles and lay in a big heap decidedly covered with dust and cobwebs. Borg who must now stand bent beneath the heated rooftiles and inhale the dust, was about to give it up, but when on the second day he found a new mineral which he suspected to be unknown, he at once applied himself to the work and started classifying. During this he made observations which shook his already faint belief in the whole system of the science, and he commenced seeing that the stones were not classified by nature but it was the brain that classified the phenomena. Besides, everything might be classified if one could only decide upon a basis of division, and he soon saw that the basis employed here was not the most rational one, the very foundation being an unsettled hypothesis; for instance, that the primitive rocks had been formed through melting by fire, contrasting with the stratified rocks which were positively regarded as deposited in water; but some of the primitive rocks were also stratified like the younger sedimentary formations; then he found that all of it was twisted and guessed at and the whole system founded on guess work. In the meanwhile he had analyzed his mineral and found that it was hitherto unknown, whereupon he gave it to the professor who sent it to the Berlin Academy and got his name attached to the new mineral. Borg received no thanks, no mention, only a few taunting words from the professor. Irritated thereby he undertook himself to describe the next mineral which he found to be new and sent it to Lyell; his paper was read in the Geological Society, of which he was made a member. Comrades and superiors pretended to be ignorant of his success, which was in a measure disparaging to the professor who had overlooked the unknown mineral, and now repugnance grew into hate which developed to persecution. But he turned aside, made himself invisible and worked. This collection of minerals being gathered from all countries in Europe, and as Borg understood how to give to each discovery a touch of direct usefulness for the science of mining in the respective countries, he succeeded in two years to gain membership in most of the learned societies of Europe, and was decorated with badges of the Italian Crown Order, the French "Instruction publique," the Austrian Leopold order and the Russian St. Annae order, second class. But nothing availed among his surroundings, and the laughter increased at each mark of distinction which was nevertheless merited. When they could not deny the facts, they underrated their value or pretended to be ignorant of what had happened, which, however, did not prevent them from using his trodden path in their own hunt.
When at last after seven years of tormenting service he inherited a legacy from his father, who had died, and he retired from service to travel abroad as a private man, he heard alternately that he had failed in his calling and that it was a pity that he did not become anything, or that he had been discharged from office. It was with boundless disdain for human beings that he left his country to continue his studies abroad. In hotels and pensions all over Europe he met many, kinds of people with whom he formed acquaintances which were soon broken by circumstances. But everywhere he saw how people of the same period expressed the same mind about the same things, pronounced the opinion of the majority as their own, spoke phrases in place of thoughts, and he discovered thereby that it really was the thoughts of a few spirits that were ruminated by the masses. Thus he found that all geologists spoke Agassiz' and Lyell's ideas from 1830 and '40, all religious free thinkers exhaled Renan and Strauss, all brisk politicians were living on Mill or Buckle, and all who spoke up-to-date literature cast up Taine. It was then only a few main batteries which had an annunciator and which could through the conducting wires from their talents set all the small bells tinkling. Through this he soon came to the domain of psychology, visited spiritualists, hypnotizers and mind readers, saw behind these swindles some new discoveries which would surely change humanity in its mode of living thoughtlessly as cattle, perhaps contribute towards adjusting the thought mechanism, and show that this whole battle about opinions is only a strife for the power to set other people's brains in motion, to force the masses to think as I. He had been a witness to scientific encounters which had resulted in a conquest for the wrong opinion, only because the victor had sufficient authority and was supported by a majority. He had seen political and religious combats and in a legislation directly contrary to sound reason and justice, founded on approved errors, which were inherited by succeeding generations as self-evident truths.
Yes, surely it concerned only how to make one's own will valid, and the whole driving power behind the vindication of opinions were interest and passion. Interest, it was nothing else than need, a need of food and love, and to gain these required a certain amount of power. Whoever did not strive for power was a weak one, whose desire of life was attenuated, therefore the weak was always heard to demand rights, the rights of the weak, while there was only a mathematical justice given, an arithmetical truth, for the calculating of which was required a strong mind capable of emancipating itself from the delusions of interest and passions. When he searched his inner self and compared himself with a great many others, he found that through a strict self-education he had freed his judgment to a high degree, and that in him was a specially developed thrift to seek abstract justice, that truth which consists in the actual conditions, the pith of fact, why he called himself a friend of truth in the highest sense, although not prompted thereby to tell all his thoughts abroad nor prevented from replying to importunate questions, when need be, with a prevarication.
In order to trace more closely the organization of the man-brute he designed a special study of the mental faculties of all the lower animals and thus guided himself up to man. He then made a ledger over all the individuals that came in his way, from relatives, nurses, maids, to schoolmates, university comrades, society friends and superiors, in one word all who came within the circle of his observation. This he completed through a collection of personalia, baptismal certificates, and the testimonies of their acquaintances; he wrote down their equation and tried a solution of the problem of their life. It was an incredible amount of working material. When he had straightened out the confusion he saw that the human beings could be divided just as the animals and plants into large classes, orders and families according to the basis chosen. By taking several bases he came pretty near to the truth and threw the fullest illumination upon the object of his observation.
Among other things he made a diagram of the human beings, with three subdivisions, conscious, self-deceivers and unconscious. The conscious or initiated stood highest, had discerned the deceit and believed in nothing and nobody, and were usually called skeptics, feared and hated by the self-deceivers, but recognized each other at once and usually parted with the word rascal, and reciprocal accusations of bad motives. As self-deceivers he counted all religious believers, hypnotic mediums, prophets, party chiefs, politicians, charity spirits, and the whole swarm of weak ambitious ones who pretend to live for others. To the unconscious belonged children, most criminals, most women and some idiots, all of whom still live on the semi-mammalian plane without the ability to distinguish between subject and object.
Proceeding from another basis, or by ontogenesis from the fœtus up to the highest standard of man, he got as the result, children, youths, women and men.
He also used to search among his countrymen for ancestral race marks, distinguished the central Swedes from the southern Swedes, could see the Norwegian in the Vermlanders and Bohus-landers, pointed out the Finn in some of the Norrlanders, kept record of immigrated Germans, Wallons, Shemites and gypsies, which often gave him the key to various traits in otherwise inexplicable characters.