Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/336

The cynic. He is the incomplete honest man, the man who cannot accept S but has nothing to substitute for it, for he distrusts even himself. In that sense the cynic is modest. He will not compromise his hatred of S, but he cannot express H, so all the balked H energies go into constructing a rationalization of his H needs, in reverse of course. He attacks everything because he must—only by diminishing the level of the outer world can he breathe at his own self-despised level.

But he is still better than most for at least he is an honest man; he has not tried to mutilate the small part of himself he can feel. He is the saint-and-psychopath (in varying degree) enslaved by his intelligence which is the mental part of human creativity completely appropriated by society. Finally, he is the echo of the genius, the pale counterpart, as I will try to describe below.