This discussion ends with Augustine wondering where they are going with this discussion in the first place and wanting to assure Adeodatus that the exercise of the mind--even if it is in "play" is a sign of good.
Although this is a transhistorical comment, I could not help but think about how this discussion is a comment that resonates with our own age and the larger discussion about the purpose and decline of the humanities (and the university itself). What will become of university life as the push in higher education becomes more about careerism and training for work and less about a larger sense of the life of the mind--admittedly I am making a class-based comment for who can afford to pursue the life of the mind, as it is so called, except the affluent. But, I'm not sure that just because the practice of the life of the mind has trickled down from the privileged class that something at the heart of it should necessarily be abandoned. There is value to the the critical question, the investigative gaze, the refusal to bend to work (or capitalist) time by losing oneself in the book. To create, to make, to innovate--these are qualities of a life of the mind. I'm not sure how simple job training may allow one to do these things.
As we become more conversant only in small bites, i.e. twitter-speak or texting, the critical question becomes can we have longer and larger conversations that the life of the mind wants to ensure. I am certainly not a Luddite, I love texting, social media, etc., but I am also aware that the conversations I've had over a pot of coffee in an afternoon are much more enriching than a conversation that occurs and is often misunderstood over a text. Over the course of reading Augustine's dialogue, it is pointed to note that these conversations occur over days. They pickup where they leave off and, although Augustine is representing these dialogues to prove his own point, what he is unable to obscure is the good, the companionship, the bonding that occurs over the course of the conversation.
As Augustine phrases it, "to exercise the mind's strength and sharpness, with which we're able to not only withstand but also to love the heat of life of the region where the happy life is" (122).
As to this discussion regarding signs, the dialogue in this section boils down signification and how it comes in three forms. There are signs that cannot be signified by the signs they signify (conjunctions); there are those that do signify what they sign. They further divide this kind of signification into general and specific signification. This category distinction has to do with how the word "word" follows under the general definition of "sign" but means specifically linguistic signs and not, say, pictograms. Sign means "more" than "word" in terms of its ability to signify.
They will, of course, parse this further in the next section.
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