MRTS can be understand very intuitively from a world of just two inputs to produce one output for one firm. Lets assume we want to produce a fixed amount of product q*, to produce this amount we will have an input requirement set Z(x1, x2) as a function of two input, according to the assumption of convexity, the curve is a smooth curve and differentiable, the contour of this input requirement set is the commonly know isoquant. Along this isoquant, we can use different combination of two input x1 and x2 to produce q*. Intuitively, MRTS represents the firm's view of an input price relative to the other input. Because we have fix the output quantity, therefore if we use more of x1 we can use less of x2, and vice versa. Thus x1 and x2 can substitute with each other according to the ratio "MRTS".