 This brought Royce to consider theories of atonement that center upon the community’s act of forgiveness. Forgiveness, as an act of the community and not the sinner, is clearly essential to atonement. Moreover, it involves a recognition of human frailty — not just the moral frailty of the sinner in question, but that of all humans. Forgiveness involves a recognition that anyone might commit such an act, that the cause of perfect loyalty is a lost cause. Even when it can occur, though, forgiveness does not restore the community to the innocent state of harmony and “unscarred love” that existed before the betrayal (Royce 1913 [2001, 177–78]). Atonement moves the community and the traitor beyond the irrevocable deed of betrayal. This cannot be done by an act of forgiveness that returns the community and its relations to the way things were before. “The way things were” is irrevocably gone.