The self-consciousness which in one relation is knowledge, in another action, is thus the fundamental fact of human nature; and on it, therefore, the ethical end must be based, if that end can be disclosed by the nature of man, and is to express what is most fundamental in his nature. Now, as knowledge finds its completion when all things are connected with one another and the subject in a definite system of relations, the end of completed self-conscious activity cannot be different. In their final perfection, as in their fundamental nature, the two are at one. As Kant puts it,[286] the speculative and the practical reason are reconciled in the notion of end. However virtue may differ from knowledge in the processes of ordinary experience, the distinction only belongs to their finite realisation. An intuitive understanding, or understanding which, in knowing, creates the objects of knowledge, is the highest conception of reason. Yet the very notion of a finite self implies that neither such knowledge nor such activity belongs to it. In knowledge and action, as properties of the ultimate self-consciousness, human beings only participate. It is only by means of the laborious methods of observation and inference that they approach the intuition of all things as a unity in which perfect knowledge consists; and, in the same way, it is only by the gradual volitional adaptation of means to end that they are able, in some measure, to contribute to the realisation of self-consciousness in the world. [Sidenote: as self-realisation,]