A trustworthy counselor or teacher; also known as a preceptor, adviser, consultant, paraclete. When the professors of the Socratic method were displaced by the pedagogues of the scribal culture, students created their own textbooks from the formalized lectures. Among the social changes brought about by the printing press, the ready availability of a "silent instructor" from the "commonwealth of learning" revised the method of transmitting secret "tricks of the trade" to apprentices by the guild system. Subsequently, the teacher's role evolved into tutor, to augment the accumulated knowledge, and into mentor, to guide the student's quest for knowledge. See intelligentsia, immortals, masterpiece.