consummation of the design. It is sufficient if it was the "first or some subsequent step in a direct movement towards the commission of the offense after the preparations are made." The act done need not constitute the last proximate one for completion. It is necessary, however, that the attempt must have a causal relation to the intended crime. In the words of Viada, the overt acts must have an immediate and necessary relation to the offense. (Bold emphasis supplied) chanroble svirtual lawlib rary In attempted rape, therefore, the concrete felony is rape, but the offender does not perform all the acts of execution of having carnal knowledge. If the slightest penetration of the female genitalia consummates rape, and rape in its attempted stage requires the commencement of the commission of the felony directly by overt acts without the offender performing all the acts of execution that should produce the felony, the only means by which the overt acts performed by the accused can be shown to have a causal relation to rape as the intended crime is to make a clear showing of his intent to lie with the female. Accepting that intent, being a mental act, is beyond the sphere of criminal law,23 that showing must be through his overt acts directly connected with rape. He cannot be held liable for attempted rape without such overt acts demonstrating the intent to lie with the female. In short, the State, to establish attempted rape, must show that his overt acts, should his criminal intent be carried to its complete termination without being thwarted by extraneous matters, would ripen into rape,24 for, as succinctly put in People v. Dominguez, Jr.:25 "The gauge in determining whether the crime of attempted rape had been committed is the commencement of the act of sexual intercourse, i.e., penetration of the penis into the vagina, before the interruption." cralawred The petitioner climbed on top of the naked victim, and was already touching her genitalia with his hands and mashing her breasts when she freed herself from his clutches and effectively ended his designs on her. Yet, inferring from such circumstances that rape, and no other, was his intended felony would be highly unwarranted. This was so, despite his lust for and lewd designs towards her being fully manifest. Such circumstances remained equivocal, or "susceptible of double interpretation," as Justice Recto put in People v. Lamahang, supra, such that it was not permissible to directly infer from them the intention to cause rape as the particular injury. Verily, his felony would not exclusively be rape had he been allowed by her to continue, and to have sexual congress with her, for some other felony like simple seduction (if he should employ deceit to have her yield to him)26 could also be ultimate felony. We clarify that the direct overt acts of the petitioner that would have produced attempted rape did not include equivocal preparatory acts. The former would have related to his acts directly connected to rape as the intended crime, but the latter, whether external or internal, had no connection with rape as the intended crime. Perforce, his perpetration of the preparatory acts would not render him guilty of an attempt to commit such felony.27 His preparatory acts could include his putting up of the separate tents, with one being for the use of AAA and BBB, and the other for himself and his assistant, and his allowing his wife to leave for Manila earlier that evening to buy more wares. Such acts, being equivocal, had no direct connection to rape. As a rule, preparatory acts are not punishable under the Revised Penal Code for as long as they remained equivocal or of uncertain significance, because by their