 Mendelssohn’s criticisms of Spinoza are discussed below but first the complexity of his relationship to Spinoza should be noted. In his first publication, Dialogues (1761) he argued that many of Spinoza’s views were compatible with “true philosophy and religion.” In Mendelssohn’s mind, Leibniz may have given that “true philosophy” its sharpest formulation but in all likelihood by deriving its central idea of a preestablished harmony from Spinoza. Moreover, as Mendelssohn puts it, Spinoza does not so much deny the distinctiveness of the actual world as construe it as it is in the mind of God before the creation, existing only as a part of God (Philosophical Writings, 102ff, 108ff). A quarter of a century later, Mendelssohn recapitulates the latter argument as the key to understanding a “purified” or “refined” Spinozism that Lessing, at least in the realm of philosophical debate, would not have dismissed out of hand.