 This ambivalence can perhaps be traced to the mature Mendelssohn’s growing suspicions that the entire issue separating idealists and those supporting contrasting positions is misbegotten, a product of linguistic confusion (see the discussion of Mendelssohn’s views on language below). “I fear that, in the end, the famous debate among materialists, idealists, and dualists amounts to a merely verbal dispute that is more a matter for the linguist than for the speculative philosopher” (Morning Hours, p. 42 (translation slightly altered)/Gesammelte Schriften, 3/2, p. 61). Mention has already been made of Mendelssohn’s view in the Prize Essay that metaphysics’ necessary reliance upon artificial signs is one reason why its difficulties are more intractable than those of mathematics. In 1785, in Morning Hours, he goes further: “You know how much I am inclined to explain all the controversies of the philosophical schools as merely verbal disputes or at least as originally deriving from verbal disputes” (Morning Hours, p. 75/Gesammelte Schriften, 3/2, p. 104; for commentary, see Dahlstrom 2011). In keeping with these advancing suspicions about the origin and the efficacy of the issue over idealism and dualism (realism), Mendelssohn eventually comes to assign reason a mediating role in disputes between common sense and speculation. Common sense is usually but not invariably right, he contends, and hence reason’s task is to present a defense of speculation when it departs from common sense. For valuable discussion of Mendelssohn’s approach to common sense, see Franks 2011. (The appeal to reason to mediate and, if necessary, to rein in speculation also plays a significant role in Mendelssohn’s account of a “refined” or “purified” pantheism in Morning Hours. On this point, see below “9. Controversy with Jacobi over Lessing’s alleged pantheism”). As for the impact of Mendelssohn’s approach to idealism in Morning Hours, many scholars concur that Kant’s Refutation of Idealism directly takes it up. However, at least one scholar contends that Kant does so by accepting Mendelssohn’s approach (Munk 2011) while others argue, albeit for contrasting reasons, that he does so in order to refute Mendelssohn’s position (Dyck 2011; Guyer 2018a).