Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 9.pdf/175

 ably on one side of Northumberland Avenue, for example. It is only a reasonable tribute to the distinctive lucidity of the French mind to suppose the central index housed in a vast series of buildings at or near Paris. The index would be classified primarily by some unchanging physical characteristic, such as we are told the thumbmark and fingermark afford, and to these would be added any other physical traits that were of material value. The classification of thumbmarks and of inalterable physical characteristics goes on steadily, and there is every reason for assuming it possible that each human being could be given a distinct formula, a number or "scientific name," under which he or she could be docketed. About the buildings in which this great main index would be gathered, would be a system of other indices with cross references to the main one, arranged under names, under professional qualifications, under diseases, crimes and the like.

These index cards might conceivably be transparent and so contrived as to give a photographic copy promptly whenever it was needed, and they could have an attachment into which would slip a ticket bearing the name of the locality in which the indidivual was last reported. A little army of attendants would be at work upon this index day and night. From sub-stations constantly engaged in checking back thumbmarks and numbers, an incessant stream of information would come, of births, of deaths, of