Faith & Spirit Quote by Josiah Royce

Royce is smuggling a radical claim into devotional-sounding prose: individuality is not something you protect from the divine, but something you receive through it. The sentence pivots on a paradox. God "attains and wins and finds" uniqueness - verbs of pursuit, almost competitive, as if even divinity must labor to secure identity. Then that achievement cascades into human life: we "win" individuality precisely in "union with him". For a modern ear trained to hear union as erasure, Royce flips the fear. The self does not dissolve; it clarifies.

The intent is metaphysical and moral at once. Royce, a central figure in American idealism, is arguing against the era's twin temptations: atomistic individualism (the self as a sealed private property) and flattening collectivism (the self as a replaceable unit). His "union" is not merger into sameness but participation in an all-encompassing consciousness that can hold differences without turning them into noise. Uniqueness becomes meaningful only when it is recognized and integrated into a larger interpretive whole.

Subtext: your life isn't self-authored in the heroic, Emersonian sense; it's co-authored by a community of interpretation whose ultimate form is God. The phrase "essential to their true meaning" gives away the stakes. Royce is less interested in personality than in significance. Individuality is not a vibe; it's a vocation - a distinctive role within a moral universe where actions matter because they are seen, remembered, and answered. In a modern culture that treats identity as either branding or grievance, Royce offers something older and sharper: the self as a commitment that becomes fully itself only under a gaze that cannot forget.