Thus, though there may be a plurality of possible causes, the causation in the given case may be brought home to one by distinctive accompaniments, and it is the business of the scientific inquirer to study these. What is known as the "ripple-mark" in sandstone surfaces may be produced in various ways. The most familiar way is by the action of the tides on the sand of the sea-shore, and the interpreter who knows this way only would ascribe the marks at once to this agency. But ripple-marks are produced also by the winds on drifting sands, by currents of water where no tidal influence is felt, and in fact by any body of water in a state of oscillation. Is it, then, impossible to decide between these alternative possibilities of causation? No: wind-ripples and current-ripples and tidal-ripples have each their own special character and accompanying conditions, and the hypothesis of one rather than another may be made good by means of these. "In rock-formations," Mr. Page says,[1] "there are many things which at first sight seem similar, and yet on more minute examination, differences are detected and conditions discovered which render it impossible that these appearances can have arisen from the same causation."
The truth is that generally when we speak of plurality of causes, of alternative possibilities of causation, we are not thinking of the effect in its individual entirety, but only of some general or abstract aspect of it. When we say, _e.g._, that death may be produced by a great many different causes, poison, gunshot wounds, disease of this or that organ, we are thinking of death in the abstract, not of the particular case under consideration, which as an individual case, has characters so distinctive that only one combination of causes is possible.
The effort of science is to become less and less abstract in this sense, by observing agencies or combinations of agencies apart and studying the special characters of their effects. That knowledge is then applied, on the assumption that where those characters are present, the agent or combination of agencies has been at work. Given an effect to be explained, it is brought home to one out of several possible alternatives by _circumstantial evidence_.