La controverse Garat/ Saint-Martin (N. Jacques-Chaquin) The author takes up the controversy that opposed the famous theosophist to the Ideologist during the lectures Garat gave at the Ecole Normale. The former claims that " feeling and thinking are one", while the latter considers desire and will to be the roots of knowledge. Saint-Martin reproaches the Ideologists for supporting a genetic point of view; he sees language above aU as the manifestation of the characteristics present in each human being. For him desire is the teacher of language.