No man, for any considerable time, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

Hawthorne’s line comes from his 1850 novel *The Scarlet Letter*, in the chapter that anatomizes the psychological costs of secrecy and public performance in Puritan New England. The book repeatedly contrasts outward reputation with inward truth—most notably in the hidden guilt of Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whose public sanctity depends on concealing his private sin. Hawthorne, writing in the mid–19th century amid American moral reform movements and a renewed interest in Puritan origins, uses the colony’s culture of surveillance and judgment to explore how sustained hypocrisy or role-playing can fracture identity. The remark functions as a general moral-psychological observation within that larger critique.

The sentence argues that maintaining a split self—one persona for private conscience and another for public approval—cannot be sustained without damage. Over time, the effort of dissembling erodes self-knowledge: the performer begins to lose track of which “face” reflects genuine character. Hawthorne’s insight is less about a single lie than about the cumulative effect of living theatrically, letting social expectation dictate identity. In *The Scarlet Letter*, this becomes a warning about the spiritual and mental consequences of repression and hypocrisy, suggesting that authenticity is not merely a virtue but a condition for psychological coherence.