What he can do in the world depends upon the inner man and not the outer; and here we approach one of the most serious problems connected with the race. Has the Negro character? Can he conceive a standard and adhere to it? Can he fix his mind on a distant good and for its sake give up present indulgences? Can he restrain the primal impulses of human nature? That the Negroes as a race are impure and unregulated is the judgment of most white observers whether ill-wishers or fair-minded men. Thomas Nelson Page, for instance, declares that the immorality of the negro race has increased since slavery times. Thomas, himself a Negro, asserts that the sexual impulse "constitutes the main incitement to the degeneracy of the race, and is the chief hindrance to its social uplifting." Kelsey, a Northern observer, says: "Many matings are consummated without any regular marriage ceremony and with little reference to legal requirements." On this subject as on all others the most preposterous exaggerations are rife; a plantation manager will tell you that not two in a hundred couples on his plantation are married; a stock statement, a thousand times repeated, is that there is no such thing as a virtuous negro woman. Yet the truth is gruesome enough; there are plenty of plantations where barely half the families are married; bastard children are very numerous; and this condition applies not only in the cities and towns where people are put into new and trying environments, but everywhere among the Negroes upon the land. It is the most discouraging thing about the race, because it saps the foundation of civilization. Nor is it an explanation to say that under slavery family ties were disregarded. The race has now had forty years of freedom and undisturbed religious training, such as it is. Still they ought to show decided improvement in morals if the race is capable of living on a high moral plane.