3. Thus the diverse gifts of the divine spirit are distributed differently among the various classes and tribes of men, according to their capacity and the corresponding task which is assigned them by Providence. The divine spark is set aglow in each human soul, sometimes feebly, sometimes brightly, but it blazes high only in the privileged personality or group. The mutual relationship between God and man is recognized by the Synagogue in the Eighteen Benedictions, where the one directly following the three praises of God is devoted to wisdom and knowledge: “Thou favorest man with knowledge, and teachest mortals understanding. So favor us with knowledge, understanding, and discernment from Thee. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, gracious Giver of knowledge.”(695) This petition, remarks Jehuda ha Levi,(696) deserves its position as first among these prayers, because wisdom brings us nearer to God. It is also noteworthy that the Synagogue prescribes a special benediction at the sight of a renowned sage, even if he is not a Jew, reading, “Praised be He who has imparted of His wisdom to flesh and blood.”(697) 4. Maimonides holds that in the same degree as a man studies the works of God in nature, he will be filled with longing for direct knowledge of God and true love of Him.(698) “Not only religion, but also the sciences emanate from God, both being the outcome of the wisdom which God imparts to all nations,”—thus wrote a sixteenth-century rabbi, Loewe ben Bezalel of Prague, known usually as “the eminent Rabbi Loewe.”(699) The men of the Talmud also accord the palm in certain types of knowledge to heathen sages, and did not hesitate to ascribe to some heathens the highest knowledge of God in their time.(700) As a mystic of the thirteenth century, Isaac ben Latif, says: “That faith is the most perfect which perceives truth most fully, since God is the source of all truth.”(701) Of the two heads of the Babylonian academies, Rab and Samuel, one asserted that Moses through his prophetic genius reached forty-nine of the fifty degrees of the divine understanding (as the fiftieth is reserved for God alone), while the other claimed the same distinction for King Solomon as the result of his wisdom.(702)