Malon B. - Louis Dramard: Difference between revisions

  | origin = English: Benoit Malon, ''Louis Dramard''

  | has text = yes

  | publications = [[Lucifer/Vol2|''Lucifer'', vol. 2]], no. 10, June 1888, pp. 323-329

  | read links = [[Lucifer/Vol2/Text|Electronic journal edition in Teopedia]]

  | download links = [https://opusmagnum.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/lucifer_v2.pdf Original volume (PDF)]

}}

Through the recent death of <span style="font-variant:small-caps">Louis Dramard</span>, the President of L’Isis, the French Branch of the Theosophical Society, the movement in that country loses one of its most devoted and self-sacrificing supporters. In the full sense of the word he was a true Theosophist, and the deep respect and affection which he inspired in all who were brought in contact with him, were as much a tribute to the nobility of his character and the self-devotion of his life, as to the great intellectual gifts with which he was endowed.

A man truly worthy of the name knows, without needing to read it in the Iliad or in the Bible, that “life is bitter and full of tears,” that “every creature groans,” that consequently everyone has his burden which must be courageously borne. He knows too, that life is nothing, unless consecrated to personal improvement and the accomplishment of social duty; and that, according to a

powerful saying of Strauss,<ref name="v2-p324-n1">“Essays in Religious History,” &amp;c., by D. F. Strauss.</ref> he alone is to be reckoned in reality among human beings who, in his sphere, whether great or small, has toiled according to his strength to bring about a just condition of things, and has been enlightened, good and useful.

{{Style P-Quote|1=. . . . Towards the close of his life, already undermined by the cruel disease

to which he was destined to succumb, Louis Dramard devoted himself to a new class of studies; he joined the ''Theosophical Society.''

The fact of the adhesion of Louis Dramard to the Theosophical Society is a fact too important in his life to permit us to abstain from entering into some detail concerning it; and one cannot do better in the first instance, than reproduce, on this subject, a letter from our regretted friend to Mme. Camille

Lemaitre; <ref name="v2-p326-n1">“Madame Camille Lemaitre, the co-religionary, and to some extent the disciple of Dramard, sends us this extract in a letter full of feeling, in which our departed friend is spoken of with an eloquence inspired by a sympathy and an admiration which he fully deserved. We regret extremely to be unable, owing to want of space, to reproduce this touching tribute to our valued friend. – [<span style="font-variant:small-caps">B. Malon.</span>]</ref> one of those rare letters in which this thinker, who united to an exquisite delicacy the very greatest modesty, spoke a little about himself. We quote:

“Nevertheless, I remained a materialist; for want of anything better, I deduced, from the law of the universal attraction of atoms, the solidarity of all

that lives, in direct proportion to the resemblance of the forms, and in theory as in practice, I was a socialist, that is to say that I admitted for all men the equality of the goal to be attained, and the obligation to mutually assist each other.

And Dramard did become an adherent of Theosophy.<ref name="v2-p327-n1">“My own philosophic convictions did not permit me to follow Dramard in this instance. I have remained for the Theosophists one of the profane, being unable to accept their cosmogony, but one who attaches the greatest importance to their ethical philosophy, which is, moreover, in accord with that of the greatest and most human moralists of all ages and to which I have done full justice in my ''Social Morality''.”</ref>

After stating in a few words the objects of the Theosophical Society, too well known to need repetition here, M. Malon continues: –

“From the most distant nebulæ to the nearest planets, from the mineral or vegetable categories to the animal kingdom, from the lowest insect up to the least advanced of savages, from the foreigner to the compatriot, from the neighbour to the friend or relation, the solidarity between the beings born of the ''Unity'' increases in the inverse ratio of the square of the distances separating them. Mathematical science, cold and infallible, would permit to an adept, sufficiently advanced, to calculate the sum of the evils which are engendered

for themselves respectively by the despot who oppresses his fellow-men, by the egotist who exploits them, and even by the indifferent man who neglects to succour them.