Who is Mr. Richard Phillotson from Jude the Obscure and what is their importance?

Mr. Phillotson is the schoolmaster at Marygreen when the novel begins. Mr. Phillotson tells Jude that the measure of a man is his level of education, prompting Jude to look to education to improve his life and to prove he is worthy. Later, when Jude arrives in Christminster, the same college town where Mr. Phillotson went to continue his education, he looks up his old teacher and discovers he never attended university as he had planned.