 Schleiermacher says that at a certain stage of cultural and individual development all human beings have two feelings (states of self-consciousness) with respect to the world: the feeling of freedom and the feeling of dependence. The feeling of freedom corresponds to Activity, and is the feeling of being effective with respect to changes in the world. This will include not only bringing about physical changes (say, digging a hole in the earth) but also perceiving things (perceiving is a sort of activity with respect to the thing perceived) and thinking about them. By contrast, the feeling of dependence corresponds to Receptivity and is the feeling of being acted upon by things in the world (say, being affected by the food one eats or helped by fellow human beings). Vis-à-vis the world and the things in the world, people always have a mixture of the feeling of freedom and the feeling of dependence. One never has a feeling of absolute (unqualified, schlechthinig) freedom with respect to anything, for no matter how active one is with respect to it, there will always be an element of receptivity or dependence on it or some aspect of it or something closely associated with it.