Ludovicus Vives published his De disciplinis in \ 1531, in the fortieth year of his life. The work is a systematic review of the arts and sciences, in twenty-one books, proceeding from a history of the trivium and quadrivium to a proposal for a reformed university, a character test for teachers, and a set of improved textbooks in metaphysics and logic (to which Vives later added expositions of rhetoric and psychology). A work of this scope would probably have been begun a number of years before publication, especially if those years were full of other activities.