“Good manners are the happy way of doing things” according to Ralph Waldo Emerson. According to Emerson, people use good manners as a cover to appear better. This will inherently lead to a contradiction between the front and reality. One such man who is most concerned with manners is the protagonist of Shaw's Pygmalion, Professor Henry Higgins. Higgins is a man who shows contradictions in his character. His job is to teach good manners, even if he himself lacks it. Furthermore, Higgins is an intelligent man, yet he ignores the feelings of those around him. Another apparent contradiction is that Higgins' outward charm serves to hide his domineering nature. He manipulates Eliza and others around him to serve his own purposes, without any regard for her feelings. Higgins, a teacher of manners, lacks the very manners that others pay to learn from him. Ironically, Higgins believes himself to be the greatest teacher of manners. He announces that in "three months [he] could pass [Eliza] off as a duchess." Higgins thinks he can take any lower class girl and pass her off as a duchess. He truly believes he is capable of transforming Eliza. Once he begins teaching, Higgins shows no respect for others in his life. When he goes to visit his mother, she reminds him that "[he] promised not to come" on his days when he has guests. He ignores this promise to his mother because he believes that his new experiment is more important than his mother's insignificant visitors. This behavior continues throughout… half of the article… ulative experiments on life. Higgins tries to use his charm to manipulate people into giving him what he wants, but when this tactic fails he resorts to brute force and abuse. It is amazing that a man with such great qualities and characteristics can also have the opposite bad qualities of those greats. How these traits can coexist in one person makes no sense. One of the traits must be a false front. This is the nature of the world. When two opposites meet in the same place and do not alter each other, then one of them is maintained as a facade. At any moment this facade can shift or crack and the person's true nature will come to light. People who show too many contradictions of character are usually real hypocrites.