The philosophers treated in Chapters 7-10 either were closely asso-
ciated with Athens or lived during the period of Athenian ascendency.
All of these thinkers attempt to formulate systematic points of view
mediating between the Ionian faith that rational explanation of the
changing world of experience is possible, and the Italian school's refine-
ment of the nature of such explanation (as with the Pythagoreans), even
to the point of concluding that it is impossible (as with the Eleatics).
Their mediating systems are in the mainstream of early Greek philo-
sophy and in fact constitute its culmination.

Winspear's characterization of these thinkers as progressive material-
ists may be somewhat forced, but his observations offer genuine insight
into the direction of their thought:

Beginning as it did with a profound interest in change and
process, the philosophy of the progressives endeavored to
build up a philosophical opposition to the conservative
emphasis on the changeless, the static, and the eternal. But
unable (because of the acceptance of slavery) to build up any
organic and all-embracing ethical universalism which it
might oppose to the Pythagorean defense of an earlier and
more primitive concept of organism and organic harmony,
the movement of progressive thought was more and more
forced to fall back on an unbridled individualism. In ethics

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