The moral dangers resulting from a promiscuous dissemination of philosophy, the confusion of public ethics arising from its indiscriminate advocacy, were other reasons which kept its custodians from revealing it to the masses, from all whose minds were still immature and whose characters were not sufficiently formed. For such people tend to make it a support for their own weaknesses and a pretense for their own sins. Its idea of the relativity of morality would be taken advantage of for immoral ends. Since philosophy advocates a far higher ethic than is commonly followed, how great would be the horror of its custodians at such a lamentable result? Since it advocates the highest kind of personal responsibility for one's actions, how great would be their consternation at the personal irresponsibility which might be shown by those who could only pick up one or two of its truths at best, and that without rightly understanding them? The extreme effect of the highest revelations upon the lowest mind was seen in cases like that secret fraternity of the "Assassins" whom the Crusaders discovered in the Near East, a fraternity of insane and criminal mystics whose motto was "Nothing is true: everything is permitted."
-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 2 : Its Contemporary Influence > # 248
