"God too longs; and because the Absolute Life itself, which dwells in our life, and inspires these very longings, possesses the true world, and is that world"
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God too longs. Royce dares to ascribe yearning to the divine, not to diminish God but to show how our most earnest desires signal something larger than the private self. The Absolute Life, for him, is not a distant monarch but the living unity of meaning that indwells finite minds. When we ache for truth, reconciliation, beauty, or justice, that impulse is not merely psychological restlessness; it is the Absolute stirring within us, calling us toward a reality already held in perfect comprehension.
The striking paradox is that God both longs and already possesses. Royce resolves it through absolute idealism. The true world is not a heap of facts but a complete system of meanings fully grasped in one all-inclusive experience. From our partial vantage, the good appears as a task, a series of unanswered questions and broken loyalties. From the Absolute vantage, the answers cohere, and every fragment finds its place. God longs because the divine life includes our temporal striving; God possesses because, taken as a whole, that life already is the consummated order of truth. Our unrest is the finite face of a fulfillment that, in the Absolute, is secure.
This vision carries ethical weight. Longing becomes a vocation. To be loyal to causes that outlast the self, to seek truth with intellectual humility, to build communities of trust and interpretation, is to cooperate with the divine life in us. Royce’s later idea of the Beloved Community captures this: an endless, inclusive fellowship whose members correct, sustain, and redeem one another. God, as the spirit of that community, is not an absentee perfection but the living center of shared meaning.
Set against late nineteenth-century skepticism and the pragmatist quest for workable truth, Royce offers consolation without complacency. The ultimate world is real and possessed, yet it summons us. Our longings are both evidence of that world and the path by which we help it shine into time.
The striking paradox is that God both longs and already possesses. Royce resolves it through absolute idealism. The true world is not a heap of facts but a complete system of meanings fully grasped in one all-inclusive experience. From our partial vantage, the good appears as a task, a series of unanswered questions and broken loyalties. From the Absolute vantage, the answers cohere, and every fragment finds its place. God longs because the divine life includes our temporal striving; God possesses because, taken as a whole, that life already is the consummated order of truth. Our unrest is the finite face of a fulfillment that, in the Absolute, is secure.
This vision carries ethical weight. Longing becomes a vocation. To be loyal to causes that outlast the self, to seek truth with intellectual humility, to build communities of trust and interpretation, is to cooperate with the divine life in us. Royce’s later idea of the Beloved Community captures this: an endless, inclusive fellowship whose members correct, sustain, and redeem one another. God, as the spirit of that community, is not an absentee perfection but the living center of shared meaning.
Set against late nineteenth-century skepticism and the pragmatist quest for workable truth, Royce offers consolation without complacency. The ultimate world is real and possessed, yet it summons us. Our longings are both evidence of that world and the path by which we help it shine into time.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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