importance vs the thing

importance

noun
  • Something of importance. 

  • The quality or condition of being important or worthy of note. 

  • personal status or standing. 

  • significance or prominence. 

the thing

noun
  • The needful thing: something suitable for the purpose. 

  • The desired thing: someone or something that is popularly favored. 

How often have the words importance and the thing occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )