 Vives was pessimistic about the possibility of attaining knowledge as understood in Aristotelian terms; and his thought anticipates the moderate skepticism of early modern philosophers such as Francisco Sanches (1551–1623) and Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655). Vives belongs, like Francis Bacon (1561–1626), to the so-called “maker’s knowledge” tradition, which regards knowledge as a kind of making or as a capacity to make (see A. Pérez-Ramos, Francis Bacon’s Idea of Science and the Maker’s Knowledge Tradition, Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press and Oxford University Press, 1988). He often insists on the practical nature of knowledge; for instance, in De causis corruptarum artium, he maintains that peasants and artisans know nature far better than many philosophers (VI, 190). In Satellitium animi (The Soul’s Escort, 1524), a collection of aphorisms dedicated to Princess Mary, he points out that “man knows as far as he can make” (IV, 63). A central tenet of the maker’s knowledge tradition is that man cannot gain access to nature’s intimate works, since these, as opera divina (divine works), are only known to God, their maker.