Ich würde
I would
vor diesem Buche, das nicht eigentlich für das Publicum bestimmt war,
that was not really intended for the public
demselben nichts zu sagen gehabt haben,
wenn es nicht, sogar ungeendigt, auf die indiscreteste Weise vor einen Theil desselben wäre gezogen worden.
if it had not, even unfinished, been drawn in the most indiscreet way in front of a part of it.
Too much gossip! Fichte, not even graduated, but supported by Kant: the shooting star, has arrived at Jena, already a center of philosophy (Reinhold and Friedrich Schiller were teaching there), where everybody was waiting for the new professor and his thought. Soon the young romantics would arrive, too. But already in 1794, Fichte's unpublished thoughts must have been discussed in public, he had to react and puplish a first version: at least that is what he makes us, his readers believe. As philosophy is becoming fashionable, urgency is created. As Friedrich Schlegel commented later on: the Wissenschaftslehre was one of "the most important trend-setting events (Tendenzen) of the age."