Hence it comes that most objects alleged to be beautiful, and doing duty as such, show considerable ingenuity of design and are calculated to puzzle the beholder--to bewilder him with irrelevant suggestions and hints of the improbable--at the same time that they give evidence of an expenditure of labor in excess of what would give them their fullest efficency for their ostensible economic end.
This may be shown by an illustration taken from outside the range of our everyday habits and everyday contact, and so outside the range of our bias.

Such are the remarkable feather mantles of Hawaii, or the well-known cawed handles of the ceremonial adzes of several Polynesian islands.

These are undeniably beautiful, both in the sense that they offer a pleasing composition of form, lines, and color, and in the sense that they evince great skill and ingenuity in design and construction.
At the same time the articles are manifestly ill fitted to serve any other economic purpose.

But it is not always that the evolution of ingenious and puzzling contrivances under the guidance of the canon of wasted effort works out so happy a result.

The result is quite as often a virtually complete suppression of all elements that would bear scrutiny as expressions of beauty, or of serviceability, and the substitution of evidences of misspent ingenuity and labor, backed by a conspicuous ineptitude; until many of the objects with which we surround ourselves in everyday life, and even many articles of everyday dress and ornament, are such as would not be tolerated except under the stress of prescriptive tradition.