The First Treatise, or General Introduction, which has in it clear indication of a later date, may have been written last, when the whole design was brought into shape.
Various reasons have been used for dating this final arrangement of the plan for an Ethical survey of human knowledge in fifteen treatises, and the suggested date is the year 1314.

The whole work seems to have been planned.

Besides the references to the Fifteenth Treatise, there is a glance forward to the matter of the Seventh Treatise in the twenty-sixth chapter of the Fourth.
The question of date is not of great importance, and this may console us though we know that it can never be settled.

Here it is only touched upon to show the significance of one or two historical allusions in the book..