The potential goals our soul wishes to realize through the personality are not material. They are higher, ideal qualities that Dr. Edward Bach referred to as the virtues of our higher nature. They include gentleness, firmness, courage, constancy, wisdom, joyfulness, and purposefulness. Poets of all ages have praised these as noble qualities of character. They could also be called the ideal archetype soul qualities of mankind whose realization as part of the big picture embodies our true happiness. If these potential qualities are unrealized, sooner or later the opposite feeling-unhappiness will develop.
The virtues that we have failed to realize now show themselves from their shadow side as vices such as pride, cruelty, hatred, self-love, ignorance, and greed.
Dr. Bach referred to these vices as the primary diseases of mankind and stated that they are the ground from which physical illness grows.
