Читать книгу Fingerprints: Murder and the Race to Uncover the Science of Identity - Colin Beavan - Страница 4

Every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which he can always be identified—and that without shade of doubt or question. These marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, and this autograph can not be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and mutations of time. This signature is not his face—age can change that beyond recognition; it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not his height, for duplicates of that exist; it is not his form, for duplicates of that exist also, whereas this signature is this man’s very own—there is no duplicate of it among the swarming populations of the globe … This autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which Nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet.

—Samuel Clemens, writing as

Mark Twain, in The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894