But there was no steadiness in him. Periods of indifference to these studies alternated with feverish activity, and doubts of the truth of Christianity, with bursts of devotion. However, the Hebraically stern cast of mind of the externally gay student soon wearied of this rudderless existence. He sighs for an "Archimedean" point of support for his conduct of life. We find the following entry in his diary, which prophetically foreshadows some of the fundamental ideas of his later career: "...what I really need is to arrive at a clear comprehension of what I am to do, not of what I am to grasp with my understanding, except insofar as this understanding is necessary for every action. The point is, to comprehend what I am called to do, to see what the Godhead really means that I shall do, to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and to die..." This Archimedean point was soon to be furnished him. There came a succession of blows, culminating in the death of his father, whose silent disapprobation had long been weighing heavily on the conscience of the wayward son. Even more awful, perhaps, was a revelation made by the dying father to his sons, very likely touching that very "sin against the Holy Ghost" which he had committed in his boyhood and the consequence of which he now was to lay on them as a curse, instead of his blessing. Kierkegaard calls it "the great earthquake, the terrible upheaval, which suddenly forced on me a new and infallible interpretation of all phenomena." He began to suspect that he had been chosen by Providence for an extraordinary purpose; and with his abiding filial piety he interprets his father's death; as the last of many sacrifices he made for him; "for he died, not away from me, but for me, so that there might yet, perchance, become something of me." Crushed by this thought, and through the "new interpretation" despairing of happiness in this life, he clings to the thought of his unusual intellectual powers as his only consolation and a means by which his salvation might be accomplished. He quickly absolved his examination for ordination (ten years after matriculation) and determined on his magisterial dissertation[3]. Already some years before he had made a not very successful debut in the world of letters with a pamphlet whose queer title "From the MSS. of One Still Living" reveals Kierkegaard's inborn love of mystification and innuendo. Like a Puck of philosophy, with somewhat awkward bounds and a callow manner, he had there teased the worthies of his times; and, in particular, taken a good fall out of Hans Christian Andersen, the poet of the Fairy Tales, who had aroused his indignation by describing in somewhat lachrymose fashion the struggles of genius to come into its own. Kierkegaard himself was soon to show the truth of his own dictum that "genius does not whine but like a thunderstorm goes straight counter to the wind."