WOOLLY POMPOSITIES 
103 
secret-peddlers, the U.B., the O.H.M., the A.M.O.R.C., and all 
the other gangs of self-styled Rosicrucians; they should be 
hissed off the stage. 
Now that we are agreed upon the conditions to be satisfied 
if we are to allow that a given proposition contains a Thought 
at all, it is proper to tum our attention to the relative value 
of different kinds of thought. This question is of the very 
first importance : the whole theory of Education depends 
upon a correct standard. There are facts and facts: one would 
not necessarily 
be much the wiser if one got the 
Encyclopaedia 
Britannica by heart, or the Tables of 
Logarithms. The one aim of Mathematics, in fact-Whitehead 
points this out in his little Shilling Arithmetic-is to make 
one fact do the work of thousands. 
What we are looking for is a working Hierarchy of Facts. 
That takes us back at once to our original "addition and 
subtraction " remark in my letter on Mind. Classification, the 
first step, proceeds by putting similar things together, and 
dissimilar things apart. 
One asset in the Audit of a fact is the amount of 
knowledge which it covers. (2 + 5)2 = 49; (3 + 4)2 = 49; 
(6 + 2)2 = 64; (7 + 1)2 = 64; (9 + 4)2 = 169 are isolated facts, 
no more; worse, the coincidences of 49 and 64 might start 
the wildest phantasies in your head-"something mysterious 
about this." But if you write: the sum of the squares of any 
two numbers is the sum of the square of each plus twice their 
multiple-(a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2 -you have got a fact which 
covers every possible case, and exhibits one aspect of the 
nature of numbers themselves. The importance of a word 
increases as its rank, from the particular and concrete to the 
general and abstract. (It is curious that the highest values of 
all, the "Laws of Nature, " are never exactly 'true' for any 
two persons, for one person can never observe the identical 
phenomena sensible to another, since two people cannot be 
in exactly the same place at exactly the same time: yet it is 
just these facts that are equally true for all men.) 
Observe, I pray, the paramount importance of memory .