 Tsongkhapa outlined three types of “intrinsic characteristic” (rang mtshan) that convey important features of the different metaphysical systems of the Abhidharma, Dharmakīrtian epistemology, and the Consequence School, respectively. Through this threefold distinction he sets up his presentation of what uniquely defines the ultimate truth, and by implication, the conventional truth, in the Consequence School, while incorporating a range of metaphysical systems into his comprehensive interpretative scheme. Firstly, Tsongkhapa says that an “intrinsic characteristic” is distinguished from a “general characteristic” in the Abhidharma context of metaphysics, where an intrinsic characteristic distinguishes a particular trope from a general type. That is to say, an intrinsic characteristic marks a contrast that delineates, for instance, the heat of fire (intrinsic characteristic) from its being a member of the larger class of material form (general characteristic). Tsongkhapa conveys another meaning of “intrinsic characteristic” found in Dharmakīrtian epistemology that distinguishes the “intrinsic characteristic” that is the unique particular from that which is an universal. In contrast to the second meaning of “intrinsic characteristic”—which marks a contrast of a more real kind of entity (a particular) from another, less substantially real counterpart (an universal)—the third meaning of “intrinsic characteristic” represents a subtle kind of reification that is a problem. This third type of intrinsic characteristic is presupposed by distorted cognitions that impute things to have independent existence. This kind of intrinsic characteristic, as the imputation of things existing on their own, even conventionally, is what Tsongkhapa describes as the subtle reification that is uniquely eliminated in the philosophical system of the Consequence School (Tsongkhapa 2008, 425–426).