The means organized by Ignatius into a method of moral education I will sketch in the words of his contemporaries. Ribadeneira, his biographer, says: "Those means are employed by our Masters, whereby virtue is conceived in the hearts of the pupils, is preserved and augmented. They are morning prayer, for obtaining grace from God not to fall into sin; night prayer and a diligent reflection on all the thoughts, words, and actions of the day, to do away by contrition of heart with all the faults committed; the attentive and devout hearing of Mass every day; frequent and humble confession of sins to a Priest; and if they are old enough, and great devotion recommends it, and their confessor approves of it, the reverent and pious reception of the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ; teaching and explaining the rudiments of the Christian faith, whereby the boys are animated to live well and happily. Besides, great pains are taken to know and root out the vices of boyhood, especially such as are somehow inborn and native to that age."[103] Here, by the way, the reader may advert to the fact that the confessional, of which mention is made, never comes in as part of the external means of moral development; nor is a superior ever the confessor of those under his charge, except when desired to be so by the free choice of the subordinate himself. A general law of the Catholic Church ordains it thus. Loyola's biographer goes on to the various means, whereby, in such a multitude of young persons, the bad element, which unfortunately will never die, is either suppressed and kept at its lowest stage of a struggling vitality, or else, if it happens to shoot up, is weeded out. The garden will be none the poorer for that. Nil dabit inde minus! There are, moreover, the division of students into categories and ranks, with their own officers from among the boys themselves; the degrees of honor and preëminence assigned to good conduct and virtue; especially the pious societies or Sodalities, into which none are admitted save the most studious and virtuous among the youths; and that with a discrimination in favor of superior merit, even among such as answer the general description. The Sodalities of the Society of Jesus, as the subject of a study upon the management of youth, and indeed upon the cultivation of all ranks in Christian society, from Peer and Field Marshal and Viceroy, down to the little boy beginning his career at school, would deserve a special discourse for themselves.