The broad distinction between instinctive act and act which is intelligent and free is that the latter is performed consciously; when the content that motivates a subject to action is drawn out of its immediate unity with the subject and is made to stand before it as an object, then it is that the freedom of spirit begins, the same spirit who, when thought is an instinctive activity, is caught up in the web of its categories and is splintered into a material of infinite variety.