 Royce’s powerful and original explanation of the doctrine of atonement in The Problem of Christianity details how the loyal community can best respond to human evil. The highest kind of transgression in an ethics of loyalty is treason, or the willful betrayal of one’s own cause and the community of people who serve it. The traitor is one who has freely embraced a cause and joined with a community of grace in service of that cause, but who then culpably commits some act that undermines the cause and the community. Such a betrayal is but one step away from moral suicide: it threatens to destroy the network of purposes and concrete social relationships that define the traitor’s self (Royce 1913 [2001, 162]). Atonement occurs when the traitor and the community are reconciled, when they are both saved from the evil deed through some act of the will.