A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. I
John Stuart Mill · en
From the fact that the genus includes the species, in other words
_de_notes more than the species, or is predicable of a greater number of
individuals, it follows that the species must connote more than the
genus. It must connote all the attributes which the genus connotes, or
there would be nothing to prevent it from denoting individuals not
included in the genus. And it must connote something besides, otherwise
it would include the whole genus. Animal denotes all the individuals
denoted by man, and many more. Man, therefore, must connote all that
animal connotes, otherwise there might be men who are not animals; and
it must connote something more than animal connotes, otherwise all
animals would be men. This surplus of connotation--this which the
species connotes over and above the connotation of the genus--is the
Differentia, or specific difference; or, to state the same proposition
in other words, the Differentia is that which must be added to the
connotation of the genus, to complete the connotation of the species.
The word man, for instance, exclusively of what it connotes in common
with animal, also connotes rationality, and at least some approximation
to that external form which we all know, but which as we have no name
for it considered in itself, we are content to call the human. The
Differentia, or specific difference, therefore, of man, as referred to
the genus animal, is that outward form and the possession of reason. The
Aristotelians said, the possession of reason, without the outward form.
But if they adhered to this, they would have been obliged to call the
Houyhnhnms men. The question never arose, and they were never called
upon to decide how such a case would have affected their notion of
essentiality. However this may be, they were satisfied with taking such
a portion of the differentia as sufficed to distinguish the species from
all other _existing_ things, though by so doing they might not exhaust
the connotation of the name.