Emerson suggests that people are most fully themselves when no audience is present. The arrival of another person introduces expectations, manners and concerns about how one will be judged, creating pressure to alter what is said or shown. His use of “hypocrisy” is deliberately severe, drawing attention to the gap that can emerge between private thoughts and public behaviour.

Within Friendship, the statement helps explain why Emerson places such importance on sincerity between friends. Genuine friendship should reduce the need for performance and allow people to speak more openly than they do in ordinary social situations. The remark should not be read as a literal claim that all interaction is dishonest. Rather, Emerson is identifying a recurring tension in social life: the presence of others can encourage self-consciousness and conformity. Friendship is valuable partly because trust can narrow that distance between the private and social self.