Many thinkers worth reading wrote in past centuries:

• 1600s: Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz
• 1700s: Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Smith, Kant, Burke, Bentham
• 1800s: Schopenhauer, Mill, Sidgwick

Some of them wrote in English and their texts are usually presented in the original, even when they use archaic spelling, punctuation, and style. (This is in contrast to foreign-language works which are often translated to a modern style.)

For example, in the past there were more uses of the comma, such as

• Before any relative clause:
  • Dickens: “The objects he had lately pursued, turned worthless beside her”
  • Melville: “This august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings”
• Before any clause starting with “that” for any reason:
  • Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that…”
• After any clausal or compound subject as far as I can tell:
  • J Robertson: “Whoever is capable of forgetting [...]

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