The question is still reasonable, why this particular succession of causes existed from eternity, and not any other succession, or no succession at all.

If there be no necessarily existent being, any supposition which can be formed is equally possible; nor is there any more absurdity in Nothing's having existed from eternity, than there is in that succession of causes which constitutes the universe.

What was it, then, which determined Something to exist rather than Nothing, and bestowed being on a particular possibility, exclusive of the rest?
External causes, there are supposed to be none.

Chance is a word without a meaning.

Was it Nothing?
But that can never produce any thing.