Know your audience, know yourself

In order to be a successful orator one must masterfully manipulate the art of ethos, pathos, and logos.  However, this mastery changes based on the orators beliefs as well as the audience.  Boethius states: "The orator must look for his goal both in himself and in his audience.  In himself, because he must be able to say upon completion of the act that he has spoken well---that is, that he has spoken in a way calculated to persuade; in his audience, because he must in truth have persuaded them." (406 left column).  Knowing your audience is something rhetoricians we've read have talked about but this "looking for our goal in our audience"  takes a slightly different angle than I've considered before.  Instead of simply knowing our audience in order to successfully persuade them we must view the audience as if we've already successfully persuaded them.  This helps create a visualization of our goal.   If the orator is unable to visualize the effect he wishes his words to have then he'll never have the confidence to actually see it.  Visualizing our success is something which can go beyond rhetoric and be applied to any goal we may have.